© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
It’s something governments are fond of doing: facing an immediate and urgent problem; what better than to commission a long-winded academic inquiry lasting many months? This effectively deflects inquiries and calls for action on the basis that ‘we must wait for so-and-so’s inquiry to finish,’ or ‘we must allow whatsisname to reach his/her findings without undue interference.’
Months later, the academic report is duly published. It is long, dense and full of vague and woolly recommendations and worthy platitudes. It then just as duly shelved, but by then most people will have forgotten what it was all about in the first place. Peace in Our Time returns - until the next crisis. At which point the game starts all over again.
A prime example of this phenomemenon is the ‘Independent Review into the Private Rented Sector (PRS)’, headed by Julie Rugg, of the University of York, which began in January and rose without a trace in the third week of October. The Federation of Private Residents Association, which describes itself as ‘The Voice of Leaseholders’, ‘broadly welcomed’ its recommendations, as did some other organisations who did not wish to upset the Communities Department which commissioned the report. But the document contains few surprises and is indeed depressingly predictable. The ‘drive to improve the quality of the assured shorthold sector’ contains recommendations which are not only disappointingly pedestrian, but, in view of what has happened to the economy in the past few months, embarrassingly inept as well.
Take the recommendation for a ‘light-touch licensing system for landlords’.
Never mind that this is a meaningless concept, which the report does not attempt to clarify - the very idea of advocating ‘light-touch’ regulation in any context, given we have just seen the catastrophic effects of ‘light- touch’ regulation in the banking system seems odd, to say the least. Ms Rugg’s report also wants mandatory regulation for letting agencies, which should have happened years, if not decades, ago, and which would surely not be too hard to enforce now selling agents are legally required to belng to approved redress scheme.
In the name of seeking ‘to increase protection for both vulnerable tenants and good landlords’, the report also wants to:
introduce a new independent complaints and redress procedure for both landlords and tenants introduce tax changes to encourage good landlords to buy more properties, including changes to stamp duty look at ways for the PRS to be more accommodating towards households on lower incomes, including considering more support for landlords prepared to house more vulnerable people get local authorities to take steps better to understand the sector and support good landlords while tackling poorly performing landlords and promoting tenants’ rights.
Astoundingly, the report fails to endorse the need for a professional build-to-let rented sector. Instead of noting how such a new sector could overcome most of the existing problems, Ms Rugg simply regurgitates all the old private rental chestnuts, offers half-baked solutions and dismisses build-to-let with a total lack of rigorous investigation or analysis on the basis of what seem to me alarmingly like prejudice rooted in a hostility to the private sector.. The report reeks of the kind of ill-informed antipathy to build-to-let which I also sensed when discussing the issue with Government officials. This might be because of their long history of being ‘in control’, which is predicated on having most of the rented sector in the hands of either social, or essentially amateur, landlords. Perish the thought, but is it possible that the authorities will decline to support build-to-let because they feel they would not be able to control it so directly? Ms Rugg’s report is, in my opinion, not only unsympathetic to build-to-let but appears almost deliberately to misunderstand it. ‘If it is imperative for policy to be implemented to encourage growth in the PRS, the Government needs to be clear about the reasons for doing so. Simply wanting the sector to be ‘bigger’ is not an adequate rationale’, Ms Rugg concludes. No, it is not an adequate rationale and nor is it the rationale behind Build to Let. Rugg also dismisses arguments based on the UK’s Private Rented Sector (PRS) being much smaller than in the US, Germany and urban France as misconceived. Instead she quotes the Netherlands, whose 12 per cent PRS is the same as our - but where there is a MASSIVE subsidised social rented sector, and the Czech Republic, whose economy and social structures are the result of decades under communism with no free market until recently. The report’s conclusion - which makes no reference to Build to Let at all - is a ringing example of the kind of Ivory Tower approach which makes academics so ill-qualified to make policy decisions, and in this case even influence them. Read it and weep, as you struggle to understand what on earth Ms Rugg is trying to say: ‘The PRS is a key component of the housing market in England. The flexibility of the PRS needs to be protected, and policy interventions should flow with the market rather than seek to change its essential characteristics. High-level co-ordination of policy between government departments would contribute to the task of framing a ‘cross-departmental’ culture for local-level intervention in the PRS. A Ministerial statement of intent would help to underline the importance of the sector to the operation of housing and labour markets, and encourage local authorities to seek a ‘private rented’ dimension to National Indicators. ‘Use of the PRS to accommodate more households on low incomes must follow from rather than drive initiatives to improve private renting: when the sector is seen as an affordable, secure environment in which to make a long-term home, there will be little need to devise policies to encourage households into private renting.’ Rupert Dickinson, chief executive of listed landlord Grainger, added: ‘We do not believe this report touches on some of the urgent issues, such as the need for further investment into the private rented sector so that it can make a real contribution towards increasing housing supply and improving quality for those wishing to access the sector. ‘While it is understandable that landlord licensing is a key issue, the licensing recommendations made by the review would be unworkable. They would put the costs of policing poor landlords onto good professional landlords and don’t even consider the practical impact withdrawing a landlord’s licence would have on a tenant.’ Nick Jopling, head of residential at CB Richard Ellis, expressed the frustration of many when he said: ‘Rugg recognises that private rented sector properties are in a worse condition than other tenures on the whole. Yet, she is almost dismissive of Build to Let, which could create a professional rented sector with an availability of high-quality homes. ‘The housebuilding sector has almost come to a standstill and this review has missed the opportunity to find ways to meet the needs of the future and to create a catalyst for the UK construction industry.’ And here’s the rub: the housebuilding sector has indeed come to a standstill. The financial standing of the housebuilders - after a decade of making often obscene profits - is so bad the even the banks don’t want to take them on, even less than the government wants to nationalise them. Yet the delivery of ‘affordable’ housing is increasingly dependent on a thriving private housing sector. In the foreseeable future we will see very few homes built of any kind, least of al ‘affordable’ ones. Ms Rugg has utterly failed to comprehend this simple yet utterly crucial fact of 2008 life.