The Home Office has updated its guide to right to rent checks, which is aimed at landlords and letting agents.
This guidance advises a landlord, letting agent or homeowner how to conduct a right to rent check when letting privately rented accommodation.
The guidance sets out the specific actions they can take to prevent liability for a civil penalty, and applies to residential tenancy agreements granted on property located in England.
Right To Rent, which are generally unpopular with landlords, can currently be conducted virtually – until April 5 2022 – as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
To view the latest guidance, click here.
What are landlords now immigration officers? Have you looked at the 65 pages of guidance notes? The Government warn on their website that “you could be sent to prison for 5 years or get an unlimited fine for renting property in England to someone who you knew or had ‘reasonable cause to believe’ did not have the right to rent in the UK”. You can even get fined £1,000 for being duped into renting to somebody who did not have the correct immigration status. The guide says that you should not discriminate but unless you have read and totally understood the guidance notes it will be safer to stick to tenants born in the UK with a UK passport and let somebody else worry about the others (this will be the rogue landlords). It would be far simpler if the prospective tenant had to register with the home office and get a “Right to Rent permit”. No UK birth certificate or passport or no “Right to Rent permit” no tenancy simple. Why should landlords have to do the Governments work for them and get fined if they don’t do it properly? After all in the real Government you get promoted for incompetence it seems.
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You’re making a good case for using a decent letting agent who takes care of all this (and the other 140 odd pieces of lettings related legislation) for you.
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Note it only applies to England … why is that?
Maybe because it has been deemed illegal and discriminatory if you don’t check all applicants not just those from overseas.
On 1 March 2019 the scheme was ruled to be incompatible with human rights by the High Court of Justice[6] in a case brought by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.
As a result of the High Court ruling, the restrictions have not been extended to Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland as of March 2020. However they remain in effect throughout England.
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