Letting agents whose websites are not compliant with legal requirements are under investigation.
Their websites fail to spell out what fees they may charge tenants and landlords.
Council officers across two London boroughs, Brent and Harrow, checked 67 letting agents’ websites and found just 14 were compliant with the law.
Brent and Harrow Trading Standards are also cracking down on letting agents that are not registered with approved money protection schemes or registered with a redress scheme.
The Trading Standards team has sent 293 advisory letters to letting agents across both boroughs warning agents of the actions they need to take.
Officers have also carried out inspections of 49 letting offices in Brent and Harrow.
Nine businesses have been issued with financial penalty notices, and six have received formal written warnings. Others are still under investigation.
Simon Legg, head of Brent and Harrow Trading Standards, said: “Often agents try to blame their web programmers for errors, but it’s the agents’ responsibility to check that their websites’ content is correct.
“We advise businesses to be proactive in this respect and schedule regular spot checks to ensure everything is being displayed as they expect.”
Cllr Eleanor Southwood, Brent cabinet member for housing and welfare reform, said: “It’s important for landlords and renters to understand their rights, to avoid being ripped off by unscrupulous letting agents.
“It is renters’ legal right to have their money protected in a certified scheme and to be able to escalate complaints if needed.
“We will go after letting agents that break the rules, just as we go after rogue landlords who exploit vulnerable tenants.”
Under the Tenant Fees Act 2019, which came into force on June 1, agents are banned from charging all but a small handful of fees.
Comments (2)
SO…
Just to be crystal clear on this, Trading Standards actively go out looking for Agents who are in some way, shape or form failing to comply with relatively new Legislation to some degree…
…yet they have ignored a vast raft of evidence shoved up their chuffs relating to certain “Agents” who have displayed – and continue to display – total disregard for every rule in the industry book, many of which have been cast in stone since 1979 and earlier and form the backbone of our industry.
Unfrickin’believable.
You
Couldn’t
Make
It
Up.
There are a number of laws affecting estate and lettings websites, which a significant majority of agents aren’t properly aware of. This is just one of them.
This lack of awareness becomes magnified for them if they employ a non-industry specialist web developer, usually a local guy who does sites for the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, and who knocks something cheap up in WordPress for them.
If the agent doesn’t know the laws affecting them what’s the likelihood of the local web guy knowing?
So the perceived savings in the build of the site end up becoming a real false economy when Trading Standards issues fines of up to £5,000, considerably more than the site could have cost in the first place.
It pays to use a specialist developer who builds websites for estate agents and lettings agents, and knows which laws affect their clients.