Decent Homes - Another Standard in Private Renting?

The government has opened its consultation on bringing the Decent Homes Standard into the Private Rented Sector. This runs until 14 October and landlords and agents can respond directly.

The Decent Homes Standard has been around for some time and is used to measure social housing. It is actually being reviewed and refreshed at the moment. The idea of introducing Decent Homes to the PRS was first mooted in the Levelling Up White Paper and has been brought up again in the Fairer Renting White Paper. This is the next step an indicates that, at least for the moment, the government is pushing on with rental reform. All that might come to a stop however depending on who the new prime minister is and his or her priorities. In fact Decent Homes is actually in use in the PRS already. The English Housing Survey measures condition in the PRS using Decent Homes in order to provide a degree of comparability with the social sector.

The new proposals intend to classify a property as non-decent if it:

• Has an HHSRS category 1 hazard;
• Has elements which are old and not in repair;
• Lacks reasonable facilities and services;
• Does not provide reasonable thermal comfort.

The consultation elaborates on each of these standards.

While the level set is deliberately fairly low and in most cases other standards require landlords to do much more this is proactive. In other words, landlords can be penalised for any of this not being done, there is no need to warn them first. This is seen as a benefit over existing systems such as the HHSRS which requires an inspection and instruction to repair.

There is an aspect in which this is an admission that current systems do not work well as they are too reliant on local authority inspections and follow up. The idea of imposing Decent Homes is to try and short-circuit this for the worst properties.

Local authorities will be able to prosecute landlords whose properties are not decent by using civil penalties or prosecuting in the magistrates courts. Contrary to news reports over the weekend I would expect that the magistrates will be limited to fining landlords and the likelihood of people being jailed over this is low. In fact, I would expect the majority of local authorities to default to civil penalties as they can retain this money. There is also a proposal to ban landlords who have properties that are non-decent.

Potentially of more interest is the suggestion that tenants will be able to seek rent repayment orders for failure to supply them with a Decent Home as well. This replicates the position for HMO licensing for example which has a twin track enforcement and penalty regime as well. Although tenants have an ability to take civil disrepair claims in the county court a the moment they have to show they reported the disrepair and Decent Homes would bypass that requirement as it is a permanent duty on landlords.

Finally, the consultation mentions the property portal which was also in the Fairer Renting White Paper. The proposal is for landlords to be able to self-certify that their property meets the Decent Homes standard. If they lie then they can be prosecuted or penalised so, in practice, any landlord who is found to have a property that is non-decent is going to find themselves being penalised twice over, once for breaching the standard and once for lying about it on the portal.

Most landlords will have little to fear from these changes as they will have properties that are decent. A smaller group will find increased pressure being put on them to provide higher quality properties, and rightly so. However, in term so of the soup that exists in the PRS with cross-cutting laws and different courts and tribunals all involved in the mix this is yet another cook spoiling the broth.