Concerns are rising that the imminent roll-out of Right to Rent has been badly thought out on grounds too numerous to mention.

No firm date has yet been announced, but it is thought it could be as early as October. The Home Office may clarify it this morning.

Commentators yesterday said that the whole immigration crisis has been dumped on letting agents and landlords, with one critic saying: “It’s all very well for landlords and agents to be checking tenants. But how did illegals get through in the first place?”

The Government has also broken its promise, that it would not take the scheme nationally across England until it had evaluated the pilot in the West Midlands.

EYE understands that in the six-month old pilot, there have been 59 illegal immigrant tenants identified, and 27 arrests made. However, there is almost no official information.

Industry compliance expert Mike Day told us yesterday evening: “The pilot is neither complete nor fully evaluated.

“The whole immigration problem is now being simply dumped on the industry.

“It is likely to cause chaos and high levels of non-compliance, plus potential for discrimination.

“Agents and landlords will take the easiest and safest route, that would mean not letting to any foreign nationals.”

Day echoes the major concern that agents and landlords, faced with the prospect of fines and jail, will discriminate against any tenants who look or sound as though they might be in any way ‘foreign’ especially if they cannot produce documentation.

There is already evidence that the pilot scheme, requiring landlords or their agents to check the immigration status of tenants, has led to British citizens without adequate paperwork being rejected.

Some of these prospective tenants have been hard to verify because they do not have passports and cannot afford the £72.50 fee to obtain something that they do not otherwise need.

Others have not been able to produce birth certificates.

There are fears that if the Government’s proposals go ahead, it will simply lead back to the old days when agents and landlords discriminated against certain tenants – the difference being that they will now do so on the back of legislation making it expedient for them to take certain decisions.

Another concern is over the requirement for “abrupt” evictions, where the Home Office declares a tenant to be illegal.

Under the impending national scheme, landlords or their agents will be required to evict tenants who have no right to be in England.

Such evictions are intended to be immediate and without recourse to the courts.

However, ministers have already acknowledged that some tenants will dispute the eviction, turning it into a long and dragged-out legal process.

If so, it would be landlords paying for the eviction.

Ways in which tenants can legitimately stave off eviction will, from October, include objections to being asked to leave after they have asked their landlord to repair properties.

The so-called ‘retaliatory’ evictions law is due to kick in under the Deregulation Act 2015.

Other concerns include George Osborne’s Budget statement that private tenants would find it easier to sub-let – meaning that landlords and agents may find it harder to know who is living in the property at any one time.

Yet another concern is there is also no detail as to protocol on tenants who subsequently lose their asylum applications should be treated if they have Assured Shorthold Tenancies.

Critics also point out that the West Midlands pilot, running since only last December, has not been evaluated.

Yet the national roll-out has now been announced despite the Government promising last September that it would be phased in nationally only “following an evaluation of the implementation in the West Midlands”.

Landlords and agents who do not comply with the requirement to check tenants and get eviction under way where necessary, risk jail sentences of up to five years.

Yesterday, the Residential Landlords Association said that the roll-out of the scheme could lead to lawful tenants being denied a home.

It said the worst impact would be in places of high demand such as London, where “many landlords will not want to take the risk of ending up on the wrong side of the law and so may deny accommodation to those who are entitled to be in the UK”.

Alan Ward, chairman of the RLA – which is meeting the Home Office today – said: “The RLA welcomes proposals to simplify repossession when an illegal immigrants has been identified by the Home Office.

“What we need is clarification as to how long this process will take.

“We also support a crack-down on rogue landlords exploiting illegal immigration, but it is not fair to put all the burden on landlords.

“They are not immigration officers and cannot be expected to readily identify documents and visas with which they are totally unfamiliar and it will require adequate resourcing.

“Given the increased penalties announced today, landlords will err on the side of caution and may deny accommodation to those fully entitled to it.

“Given the existing confusion over Right to Rent checks and documents the addition of a new criminal penalty seems premature, especially as the consultation in the West Midlands has not yet finished.

“As always, it is the responsible landlords who will face the brunt of these stringent measures.

“We need assurances that they will get the support they need to make rapid assessments whilst also knowing that there will be sufficient resources deployed to identify the criminal landlords who are exploiting illegal immigrants.”

Please also see the next story – it is extremely important, and we do urge our readers to respond to it.