Landlord Voice Magazine November 2015 - Edinburgh | Page 4
Contents
P5 - Government bill targets rogue landlords.
P6 - Back to school for Welsh landlords ahead of new
licencing.
GOVERNMENT BILL
P9 - Mark Carney - Buy-to-let mortgages could be
scaled back.
Photo: Housing Minister Brandon Lewis
LATEST LANDLORD NEWS
TARGETS ROGUE LANDLORDS
T
P10 - City snapshots - Edinburgh’s residential areas
and what is attracting investors.
P14 - Edinburgh Through the Years - A walk through
time in Edinburgh.
P16 - Edinburgh In Numbers - A closer look at the
cities property and rental market.
LANDLORD PROFILE
P18 - Alex Stafford - “I wanted to manage the property myself”.
4 | LandlordVoice | November 2015
he Government’s
flagship Bill to see
homeownership become
a reality for what has become
known as the UK’s ‘generation
rent’ had its first reading in
parliament this month.
The Housing and
Planning Bill aims to deal with
the UK housing crisis through
a mixture of reforms which
could see 1 million homes
built by 2020 and measures to
tackle rogue landlords.
Councils would be given
powers to ban landlords and
apply for a rent repayment
ordering the repayment of
rent to a tenant, or universal
credit to local housing
authorities in cases where
they are deemed to have
breached safe housing rules.
They must also
maintain a database of rogue
landlords who are subject of
banning orders.
‘Councils
would be given
powers to ban
landlords’
But on the positive
side, Section 49 of the Bill sets
out landlord powers to end
assured shorthold tenancies
where rent has not been paid.
In order to stimulate
homeownership the Bill sets
out councils’ legal duty to
guarantee 200,000 starter
homes on new development
sites to be offered to firsttime buyers at a 20 per cent
discount.
The government will
also have the power to ensure
councils get local plans
in place by 2017 to meet
housebuilding targets – which
they mostly resisted during
the last parliament.
Other planning reforms
place a duty on counc [