The government doesn’t know the impact the Renters Rights Act will have on the Tribunal that considers rent appeal cases, it’s claimed.
In its response to David Smith – a leading property lawyer and partner at Spector, Constant and Williams – the Ministry of Justice has confirmed that the government does not hold data on the average time it takes for the Tribunal to consider, process and rule upon rent increase appeals.
The revelation comes despite the Renters Rights Act encouraging tenants to challenge all, and any, rent increase proposed by a landlord, and in the face of commitments by the government to act if the Tribunal becomes overwhelmed.
As a result of the Act, due to be implemented from May 1 next year, every private renter will be able to challenge, at the Tribunal, a proposed rent increase from their landlord which is above local market rates.
However, at present, the only way of being certain if a rent increase is above market rates or not will be to take a case to the Tribunal in the first place.
What’s more, even if the Tribunal agrees with a proposed rent increase by a landlord, tenants would have nothing to lose and everything to gain from challenging any rent increase.
This is because tenants given that can bring cases to the Tribunal for free; because any increase would take affect from the day the Tribunal makes its decision, not from the point when a landlord initially suggested an increase take affect from; and because the Tribunal will be able to defer a rent increase by up to two months from the point that it makes a decision to prevent undue hardship.
The government has given itself the power to enable rent increases ruled upon by the Tribunal to be backdated where it feels the system is becoming “overwhelmed”. However, it has not explained how it defines the system being overwhelmed, and has confirmed it does not have the basic data needed to judge the impact of the Act on the Tribunal.
Smith says: “It is simply bizarre that the Government is failing to collect basic data on the performance of the rental appeals Tribunal.
“For all its talk of not wanting the system to be overwhelmed, without measuring the average time taken to process rent cases both now and in the future there will be no way of knowing the impact the Renters’ Rights Act is actually having and what additional resources are required by the Tribunal to operate effectively.
“If ministers are serious about wanting their reforms to work, they need urgently to measure, and publish in full, baseline data on the performance of the Tribunal now.
“The government should regularly publish this data to ensure everyone can see if, and when, the Tribunal starts to struggle with the anticipated massive increase in rent appeal cases it is asked to consider.”
