The government has issued a new guide to ensure landlords do not discriminate while enforcing the Right To Rent regulations.
It applies only to residential tenancy agreements commencing on or after April 6 this year, and also where a repeat check on an existing tenant is required to be carried out on or after April 6.
The document says it provides practical guidance for landlords on what they should or should not do to avoid unlawful discrimination when complying with their obligations under the Immigration Act 2014 and under the Equality Act 2010.
The code applies both to landlords and to agents acting for landlords.
Although unlawful discrimination may occur in several different ways, the focus of the guide is on avoiding race discrimination.
A key element of the guide says landlords should not:
- discriminate when conducting right to rent checks;
- simply check the status of those who the landlord thinks appear or are likely to be migrants;
- treat those with a time-limited right to rent more or less favourably;
- treat those who have access to the Home Office online checking service more or less favourably;
- treat those who provide a manual documentation as listed in the list of acceptable documents more or less favourably;
- make assumptions about a person’s right to rent, or their immigration status on the basis of their colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins, accent or length of time they have been resident in the UK.
You can see the full guide here.
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Anti-Discrimination Guide forgot to mention don’t discriminate against Landlords, treat them differently or less favourably because of the different type of person they might Rent to.
Require Landlords to have a License for people who are not in a family situation but do not required a License for people who are a family or more often a vaguely connected family.
It has to be wrong to be required to have a License for a Property according to the type of persons you Rent to, so its the type of persons that you Rent to that requires you to comply with conditions that don’t apply to other Landlords or a determining factor as to whether you are Law abiding or a Criminal, if this is not Discrimination what is.
We all, not just landlords, pick and chose who we do business with, would the average person have the dids from the local travelers site carry our roof repairs on their property ? that must come under the heading of discrimination, most of us on here will not rent to people on benefits because we know we will have problems getting the rent paid, discrimination everyone of us does it no matter who we are.
Andrew
That's selection based on criteria you know are important.
It's not discrimination.
Well yes agreed Robert but there are many out there that would say that we were discriminating against them, discrimination like vulnerable and racist is a word that is very often used incorrectly
@ Robert Brown
It IS discrimination.
And there's nothing wrong with it.
The fact we can't even use the word today without negative implications is ridiculous. Every single human being on the planet discriminates every day. That's how we make choices.
I don't discriminate.
I compare all potential tenants to a set of criteria which has been consistently successful and choose tenants who meet them.
All others are not considered irrespective of race, creed, colour etc.
In order to be seen not to discriminate on racial grounds people often discriminate against the indigenous population. You only have to look at some employment decisions to see the problems with diversity box ticking.
The Home Office online checking service is brilliant. Make it the way we check 100% of applicants from all countries including the UK.
Positive discrimination still has the word discrimination in it.
I’m anti red tape , sorry to discriminate against it but that’s life
We shouldn’t be having to do right to rent checks to begin with. I’m not an immigration officer however I’m only taking on low risk tenants. Make of that what you want
Jahan - Totally agree. Yet another hat PRS Landlords have to wear!
It should not be our job to do right to rent!! We are not a police force.
To me if a person is on UK soils should be fine to me.
It is the police and govt failure to check, monitor, act and enforce law upon non compliant people.
Toct should pay us to so right to rent.
I shall be continuing to discriminate strongly against anyone I don’t wish to rent my property to. What are they going to do - get inside my head and screen my thoughts?!!
So we might have to turn away some Polish people but encourage to accept Ukrainian, not that I have anything against either.
I haven't even started to read the latest 81 page Right to Rent guide. Now I have to read this 9 page guide as well!
It makes me want to rent to people with a UK Passport only, I'm not sure I can cope with anything else. .
On another matter, I have a vacant industrial unit. I suppose I can rent that to an illegal alien.
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