The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has announced that he is to consider the launch of an ‘ethical lettings agency’.
Burnham has also called for a stop to so-called no-fault evictions.
Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has received £128,000 in taxpayers’ money from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to crack down on rogue landlords and letting agents.
The authority will use the money to establish a “hub”, targeting landlords and letting agents who flout the law.
The hub will work by information sharing across Greater Manchester’s districts, with training for frontline officers.
Burnham said: “The majority of landlords in Greater Manchester provide decent homes and abide by the law, but with this funding GMCA will be able to more easily bring negligent landlords to task.
“The establishment of this hub is just the starting point for a wave of activity we’re planning to improve Greater Manchester’s private renting offer – for both tenants and landlords.
“We’re also exploring options for an ethical lettings agency and working up a scheme designed to showcase the region’s good landlords and call out the bad.
“We’re determined to get renting right, improve relations between tenants and landlords, prevent tenants from reaching crisis point or becoming homeless, and oust the minority of private landlords causing tremendous harm to vulnerable people and local communities.
“Private rented eviction is one of the biggest problems and we need to put a stop to ‘no-fault’ evictions.
“With more and more households becoming homeless due to being evicted from a private tenancy, it’s important we support new safeguards to protect tenants.”
Comments (13)
Oxymoronic ambitions!
“The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has announced that he is to consider the launch of an ‘ethical lettings agency’.”
As opposed to what? All the unethical ones that we’re running?
I usually have a lot of time for Andy Burnham but he’s off base with this. They should replace the word ‘fault’ with ‘reason’ in the description of the section 21 notice. There’s always a reason for them – and it’s usually related to tenant’s not behaving in a ‘tenant-like manner’.
Mr burnham is a politician with sevre left wing tendencies he is no friend of the property world.
I own a letting agency with 500 managed properties. No fault evictions are not a problem in my view. We very rarely give section 21 and only do so when tenant is causing problems like not paying rent or the landlord wants property back to move in or sell. Section 21 is the next thing in firing line of tenant lobby groups and the lefty media. It will end in it being abolished as they will get what they want, which will have huge consequences. Leave the sector alone or keep tinkering with it and screw it up forever.
I thought the communist approach was the state provided housing?
Socialist actually – the communists would requisition private stock and distribute it.
We need social housing – we always did. It is a supreme irony that most of the stock that was sold is now rented back to councils to house social tenants at enormous cost to the taxpayer – also worth bearing in mind that a very large proportion of benefit recipients are in work but are underpaid by pernicious companies which, in turn we once again subsidise through tax (those companies themselves probably underpaying tax through ‘mechanisms’) – The councils, having sold the stock were not allowed to re-invest in new social housing so the crisis we are presently enjoying was deliberately engineered by government… as is the present assaults on buy-to-let landlords. What’s surprising is what flavour of political party orchestrating this assault – no prizes for working it out but they are certainly neither Communist nor socialist.
My post was meant to be sarcastic not factual (but I dod not make that clear). I seem to remember in his manchester housing speech he spoke of forcing the sale of property to the borough and when questioned about costs he said something to the effect that it would not be at market prices! Read into that what you like right of communism or left of socialism?
Best of luck with that.
Should be a fantastic loss of money. Feel free to home all your feckless, unemployed, benefits taking members of the public and leave the members of society who contribute to us agents.
If they actually provided social housing there would not be a problem in the first place.
How many councils have tried, wasted millions of taxpayer’s £’s and then decided it’s not viable and closed up?
it can be done JC, just needs to be staffed with private sector types, and left well alone to make its own decisions in the best interests of its clients i.e. the landlord
Daz, Barnett have been trying for years – Bumblebee lettings, cannot make any money at all given the number of properties they have had and the on costs so, subsidised by council tax payer?
No he won’t. The money will be used up in ‘consultations’ and then it’ll all go quiet. This guy has made similar noises on other issues in Manchester to win support, only for nothing to happen.
Or you could stop selling off council houses, so that when tenants are asked to leave the property that belongs to someone else, they dont end up homeless.