Member Article

99.5% of people unaware of new renter protection rules

• Just one person in 200 is aware government scheme designed to protect renters exists • Leading agent: Renting redress scheme “may as well be in witness protection“

Only 0.5% of people have heard of a government-backed scheme launched last month to give greater protection to the UK’s 3.9m renters.

Research from sales and lettings firm KIS shows that 99.5% of those surveyed had not heard of the letting agent redress scheme, which is designed to hold lettings agents who give tenants and leaseholders a poor deal to account.

Since the start of October letting agents have been required to sign up to one of three government-approved redress schemes designed to give the people they rent homes to an recognised independent place to take their complaints.

The schemes - run by the Property Ombudsman, Ombudsman Services Property and the Property Redress Scheme – assess the complaints and can award compensation where appropriate.

Not a single respondent in the survey could name a single one of the schemes.

Property expert Ajay Jagota, founder and Chief Executive Officer of the North East’s most innovative sales and lettings business KIS, has expressed reservations about the redress scheme from the start.

The property firm is famous for being the first letting agents in the UK to abolish deposits, replacing them with a one-of-a-kind landlord insurance policy offering guaranteed rent, deposit replacement, legal assistance and round the clock third party emergency home repairs.

Ajay said: “A scheme like this lives or dies by people actually knowing it exists in order to complain to it. On the basis of these figures, it’s already dying.

“The saddest thing about these results is that they do not surprise me at all. To be honest, for all the profile it has the redress scheme may as well be in witness protection.

“It’s hard to see what the government’s agenda is allowing such a fundamental issue as the quality of rented housing the public profile of someone voted off the X-Factor in the first week. Is the whole purpose of the scheme just to look busy whilst not actually doing? Or is it designed to fail, making more significant changes easier to justify later?

“This scheme is designed to be of benefit to the public. If 99.5% of the public are utterly unaware that it exists, how can it ever be?

“My view remains that the best redress is always the law, and everything that needs to be illegal is illegal. The only problem is the relevant authorities all-too-often lack the resources to effectively enforce the law, and to me that is key to giving tenants the protection they deserve.”

KIS manage properties for landlords in every corner of the North East from branches across Tyne and Wear, and were named Letting Agent of the Year in the 2013 Landlord and Letting Awards. The firm expanded into residential sales in 2014.

KIS Survey of 189 adults between November 10 and 19 2014

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ajay Jagota .