Private hell

"I limit what I ask my landlord for now," says Lester (not his real name). He is afraid of complaining too loudly in case he loses his £100-a-week home. "He thinks I'm a troublemaker already."

You might think this is a historical portrait – that Lester was a victim of the notorious 1960s slum landlord Peter Rachman, or the put-upon occupant of some inner-city estate before the decent homes target came into force. But this is 2003, and Lester is a private-sector tenant in north-west London.

The housing policies of several successive governments have failed to grasp the nettle that is the private rented sector, but at last it is taking action – and calling on the public sector to help.

Councils already have certain powers when it comes to the private sector, but two key bills set to become law later this year – the Housing Bill and the Antisocial Behaviour Bill (see box, right) – involve local authorities even further in tackling the problems that plague many of the UK's 5.6 million privately rented homes. One of the Housing Bill's main measures is the mandatory licensing of houses in multiple occupation and the selective licensing of private landlords in low-demand areas, while the Antisocial Behaviour Bill encourages councils to stamp out nuisance behaviour, regardless of tenure.

The housing market renewal pathfinders, a longer-term policy, are also set to help. They will give a £500m boost to nine areas, covering 700,000 properties, 65% of which are in the private sector.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the decent homes target will apply to some properties in the private rented sector (see news section) and the independent housing ombudsman is urging private landlords to sign up to his arbitration scheme (HT 29 August, page 13). At the moment, nearly half of England's 2.1 million privately rented homes would fail the decent homes standard, and more than 200,000 are unfit for human habitation. In high-demand areas, exploitative landlords can charge exorbitant prices for disgusting properties; in low-demand areas, landlords pick up houses cheaply and, with no incentive to refurbish, fill them with nuisance tenants or let them fall into disrepair.

Reality bites
But will all this policy really help people like Lester? Not much. The move to extend the decent homes target to private homes will cover only properties rented by those on income support or benefit, and the pathfinders and selective licensing of landlords only cover low-demand areas – not much use to Lester, who lives in the high-demand London borough of Brent.

Also, although Lester's home is classed as a HMO, it is fewer than three storeys, so it wouldn't be covered by the mandatory HMO licensing plans.

"Licensing has to cover all categories of private rented houses," says Jacky Peacock, head of Brent Private Tenants' Rights Group. "We've got to have private landlords who are competent managers. At the moment, because tenants don't have security of tenure, they're all terrified to complain about anything." Peacock is just one of a group of campaigners, including housing charity Shelter, that have called for the mandatory licensing schemes in the Housing Bill to be extended to all rented homes.

Brent council has passed Lester's home as fit for habitation but critics such as Peacock say the criteria used in the fitness standard – the council tool that measures disrepair, damp and the quality of kitchens in the private rented sector – are lower than the decent homes standard for social housing.

One in three of Brent's 13,400 private rented homes fall below the fitness standard. That's much higher than the average for England of one in 10, revealed by the latest English House Condition Survey, which was published in July. Even that is more than three times the figure for homes managed by RSLs.

The government is aware of the fitness standard's shortcomings but its proposed replacement, the housing health and safety rating system, has also come under fire. Critics say the score-based system, which appears in the draft Housing Bill, is inconsistent and will be even less stringent than its predecessor.

If privately rented homes had to meet the decent homes standard, 49% would fail

The English House Condition Survey also revealed that if privately rented homes had to meet the decent homes standard, a staggering 49% would fail, compared to the 28% of RSL homes that currently fail the standard.

"Landlords can let anything, no matter what condition it's in," says Adrian Davis, director of Brighton's Citizens Advice Bureau, where many private tenants seek help. "We now have two markets. One is for wealthy, well to-do people for beautiful refurbished properties. The other is for those on lower incomes, and it's under very high pressure."

Kathryn Greig, private sector housing officer at Brighton & Hove council, reports that the average house price in her area has doubled from £90,000 to £183,300 since 2000. The average weekly rent for a one-bed flat is £150, but yet just over 17% of the homes rented on the private market are unfit. Grieg says: "High demand means it's a sellers' market. It means they can sell anything at high prices and it'll get taken."

Campaigners are also unhappy that the Housing Bill fails to tackle unscrupulous landlords who wrongly withhold tenants' deposits. According to Shelter, one in five tenants' deposits are unreasonably withheld, a total of £800m (HT 29 August, page 13), and this contributes to homelessness.

The government is unlikely to heed calls for additions to the draft Housing Bill, however, for fear of running out of parliamentary time. It says allowing councils to license landlords in high-demand areas would be hugely bureaucratic and that the issue is more serious in low-demand zones. An ODPM spokesman says: "We aimed licensing at low-demand areas because that's where the problem was. We're not ignoring the concept of nationalised selective licensing, but we wanted to tackle the most immediate problems first."

Bureaucratic it would certainly be, and there is no extra cash or training for councils to deal with the additional demands. Neil Marsden is a service development manager for Leeds council and chair of the National Accreditation Network, which tries to get landlords to sign up to voluntary registration schemes. Full licensing would be impractical without extra resources, he says: "We have 32,000 private rented homes in Leeds; we'd need 600 people to police a licensing scheme."

But there could be another way. At this year's Chartered Institute of Housing annual conference, the institute put forward a plan to force landlords to register with their local council. This would not have the power of proper licensing, but it would mean local authorities would know how to track down landlords. Many councils are swamped by the workload associated with their social housing portfolios, and don't have much of an idea which private landlords operate in their area.

Nuisance crackdown
The Home Office's Antisocial Behaviour Bill, the second major policy plank that could impact on the private sector, is to give wide powers to local authorities to crack down on problem residents, including toughening up fixed-penalty notices.

A few local authorities are piloting antisocial behaviour schemes targeted at private housing (HT 27 June, page 7) but not many councils can afford to do what Liverpool did, and finance a programme with cash from a Neighbourhood Renewal Fund zone.

In Birmingham, as in most local authorities, the antisocial behaviour unit falls within the housing department, so it is funded by the housing revenue account. This means it is not allowed to tackle problems outside of the council's stock.

Ian McGibbon, manager of the unit, says: "Most councils just don't feel a responsibility for the private sector. Neither do we know where these properties are or in many cases who the landlords are."

Paola Gorrara, a solicitor who deals with antisocial behaviour cases, mainly for Stafford Borough Council, says: "Technically, either the local authority or the police should deal with this but, in reality, neither have the resources. Local authorities can't even cope with the problems on their own stock, let alone the private sector."

We now have two markets. One is for wealthy, well-to-do people for beautiful refurbished properties; the other is for those on lower incomes, and it’s under very high pressure

Adrian Davis, Brighton Citizens Advice Bureau

"The problem is central government," insists Claire Castle, chief executive of consultant Antisocial Behaviour Operations. "There's no money for tackling nuisance in the private sector."

The funding issue
The new war on antisocial private tenants and shoddy landlords can only be won with extra cash – Newcastle, for instance, fought its battle that way (see "How Newcastle cracked it", left). Unless that is forthcoming, some will remain convinced that the measures do not do enough to improve the lot of people like Lester.

It costs councils up to £5000 to get an antisocial behaviour order, with lawyers' fees averaging £150 an hour. Taking possession of a property can cost upwards of £35,000. An ODPM report in April, Tackling Antisocial Behaviour in Mixed-Tenure Areas, found that: "Many respondents reported that in mixed tenure areas they had experienced difficulties in taking effective action, with the most common problems being lack of cooperation from landlords, inadequate resources and the absence of a clear procedure for dealing with owner occupiers and private tenants."

As part of the Antisocial Behaviour Bill, the Home Office plans to hand out £75m to as yet unnamed local agencies to tackle the problem on the ground. But there is no requirement to spend that in the private rented sector.

In addition, the Housing Bill's provisions on selective licensing in low-demand areas will include a reference to ensure private landlords deal with antisocial tenants, but these will only apply to very limited geographical areas, signed off by housing minister Keith Hill.

The fact that there are no plans to put the onus on private landlords to take out ASBOs could also be seen as an oversight. Some private landlords, however, take umbrage at the suggestion that they have a role to play in reducing nuisance. Malcolm Harrison, spokesman for the Association of Residential Letting Agents, says: "Why on earth should a landlord be responsible for the behaviour of his tenant? It's not the landlord's responsibility to police neighbourhoods any more than it is anyone else's – this is what we pay police officers for."

Private landlords can go down the repossession route, although the expense may put them off. Most react by shortening the tenancy period, often down to six months, which enables them to get possession of a property faster but also encourages a more transient population. A spokesman for the Home Office says: "We expect the private landlord to have a role. The landlord can bring in other agencies."

Not far enough?
David Ireland, housing adviser for the Local Government Association, says the government has not gone far enough. "There's nothing negative or bad that the government's doing – but you have to ask whether what it has got is actually going to make enough of a difference."

The ODPM select committee report on the draft Housing Bill also takes this view, saying: "We welcome the government's broad aim to improve standards in private sector housing, we welcome the introduction of licensing to the private rented sector – a sector that currently includes some of the worst physical conditions and management practices – but we are disappointed that the government has not gone further."

Tom Startup, researcher at centre-left think-tank the Social Market Foundation, also has reservations: "The government needs to be clear what the point of what they're doing is. It is trying to use licensing [in low-demand areas] as a method of social control, rather than as a way to improve standards for private tenants."

An ODPM spokesman says: "We did consult very widely. It is fair enough for some people to say it doesn't go far enough, but some think it goes too far. Selective licensing certainly deals with a lot of the problems in run-down areas. There are many other avenues such as the pathfinders for dealing with these problems."

A more cynical view is that the government relies on private rentals to plug the affordable housing gap, meaning it can't afford a crackdown on exploitation in high-demand areas that would put off private landlords.

The real problems are more fundamental. As Startup explains: "We need a neutral framework where the obligations are equal for all tenure types. For years, the private rented sector has had a raw deal because the Tories favoured homeownership and Labour the social housing sector.