The private rental sector provides a home to nine million people across the country and the Conservatives are determined to root out the minority of rogue landlords that give it a bad name.
Significant progress has already been made and £11.7 million has been distributed to councils to help them tackle rogue landlords.
Since 2011, nearly 40,000 inspections have taken place with over 3,000 landlords facing further enforcement action or prosecution through renting out unsafe, squalid and often illegal property.
Councils can also make repairs themselves and recoup the money from the landlord or even prohibit a property from being rented out. New laws have also strengthened measures to protect tenants and ensure that landlords provide good quality, safe accommodation.
Rogue landlords and property agents can be banned and face the toughest ever fines of up to £30,000. The extension of rent repayment orders will support tenants who have been illegally evicted.
The Conservatives will implement measures introduced in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which will introduce banning orders to remove the worst landlords or agents from operating, and enable local councils to issue fines as well as prosecute. We are proposing to make the private rented sector more family-friendly by taking steps to promote longer tenancies on new build rental homes. We are working with the British Property Federation and National Housing Federation to consolidate this approach.
As regards affordable rents we suffer particularly in the south-east from the high price of property and shortage of homes. The only sustainable solution is to build more homes and drive down competition but then we know only too well from the Local Plan how stretched we are for suitable development space in Adur and Worthing.
While I recognise that rent controls may sound attractive, evidence from Britain and around the world demonstrates that they lead to poorer quality accommodation, fewer homes being rented and higher rents. In the past, rent controls seriously damaged the private rented sector.
Between the introduction of the 1939 Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Act and the abolition of rent controls at the end of the 1980s, the private rented sector fell from 55 per cent of households to just 8 per cent. Rent controls were a significant factor for this fall as they meant that many landlords could not afford to improve or maintain their homes, leading to worse conditions for tenants.