The Energy Bills Support Scheme will see households receive £400 off their energy bills. Divided into six instalments, the discounts will begin to be applied by energy supply firms from October.
Last week housing charity Shelter grabbed the headlines by claiming that, “Tenants whose energy bills are included in their rent or service charge cannot directly claim the energy discount. Instead, they will be at the mercy of their landlord passing on this much-needed support.”
Responding to concerns about the application of the Government’s Energy Bill Support Scheme in the private rented sector, Ben Beadle, Chief Executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, says:
“Payments from the Government’s Energy Bill Support Scheme are not due to begin until October. Given this, it is irresponsible scaremongering on the part of some to be making baseless suggestions that landlords will not do the right thing by their tenants.
“The support payments should help whoever is shouldering the costs of increased energy bills. That could be either a tenant or the landlord.
“Where rents include the cost of utilities, if they have been set to reflect recent and likely future energy price rises landlords should be passing the savings from the Government’s scheme onto their tenants.
“However, where all-inclusive rents do not reflect the higher costs of energy, or where rents have been frozen to support tenants, then it is the landlord who will be shouldering costs of higher energy bills. In cases such as this the system should recognise that it is the landlord that needs the support.”
Ben Beadle continued:
“One off pots of money like this cannot disguise the need for fundamental reform of the benefits system to support vulnerable tenants and landlords alike. This needs to include unfreezing housing benefit rates and giving tenants the choice, if they so wish, to have housing cost support paid directly to their landlord.”
I cannot understand why landlords would include utilities in the rent unless they are landlords in residence. If the tenant defaults on rent, the landlord still has to pay the utility bills.
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If it’s a HMO, it makes things much easier for the tenants who don’t have to worry about one of the residents not paying or what name to put on the bills.
Energy is a regualted market, making it a crime to make a mark up on re-selling gas or electric, but it makes life easier for the tenants in HMO’s to include it in the rent, espically students who just want to focus on their studies.
Landlords are forced to pass any reduction in bills on to tenants, because if they don’t their property will be too expensive compared to other properties who do. If the “all inclusive” rent is too high, the property just sits empty.
Shelters policies don’t make sense to me. Seems they do more harm than good to the tenants, but I’m sure they have a good reason for causing the trouble that they do.
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I can understand that, just never included utilities in the rent on HMOs.
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With student lets, where the same cohort of tenants is there for a fixed period, rents can exclude utilities. For HMOs to unconnected people coming and leaving on different dates it is practically impossible to re-charge the cost so the rent reflects this.
Shelter is being irresponsible but its propaganda is working. Already on Radio 4 presenters are talking about “landlords not passing on” the rebate as if it were the tenants’ automatic right to receive it. It would be more accurate to say that landlords are not passing on the increased cost in full and many tenants will benefit.
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I can see the reasoningn when tenants arrive and leave on different dates. One reason we don’t let property that way.
Shelter will soon understand the law of unintended consequences as the PRS sinks and, for all their talk, Shelter will not house anyone.
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