Cash Available To Tackle Rogue Landlords

Local councils in England have been handed an extra £3.8 million to help pay for a crackdown on rogue landlords.

The funding has been made by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, said that all councils can apply for funding to help them step up action against those criminal landlords who break the law.

The government has also acknowledged that most landlords are providing a quality home for their tenants, but they say it's increasingly necessary to prevent the small minority who are delivering inadequate accommodation for their tenants.

'A minority of landlords appear to break the law'

Mr Jenrick said: "It's unacceptable that a minority of landlords appear to break the law and are providing rental homes that fall short of the standards that tenants will rightly expect.

"The funding will help strengthen council powers in cracking down on criminal landlords and help drive up standards in the private rental sector."

The extra funds will come from the Department's current budget and they say that more than £2 million was shared between 56 projects over the past year.

Growing numbers of landlords call emergency contractors

Meanwhile, it's been revealed that over the past year, more than half of landlords have had to call in an emergency contractor for at least one of their properties.

According to Direct Line for Business, around 53% of landlords have been forced to react to an emergency in a rental property.

On average, landlords called out a contractor once every quarter, which is around 4.7 million calls every year, or 13,000 emergency calls every day.

For those tenants who had to move out of their property because of an emergency, they could not access their home for an average of 8.5 days.

The survey found that the most common source for emergencies are related to plumbing and 365,000 rental properties were evacuated because of this.

The second most common issue involved faults with gas or electrical supplies, which led to 293,000 evacuations, followed by the escape of water, for 267,000 evacuations and pest infestations led to 195,000 homes being evacuated.

Direct Line for Business' Sarah Larkin said: "Landlords are reacting to tenants in emergencies, for example, calling contractors to resolve the issue, day and night. The true cost of an emergency is not known until the work is complete, and it's essential that landlords have insurance cover in place to cope with the incident."