Renters’ rights group tells GLA members that new regulations will be difficult to enforce

Mr Williams also raised concerns about how the new regulations will be enforced in the capital, despite acknowledging the increased powers for councils brought in by the act.

He said: “At the moment, there’s huge problems with how enforcement is carried out across the city, and unless there is a strategy from City Hall and increased funding for local government, we’re very concerned with that.”

Mr Williams re-iterated warnings by tenants’ rights groups that the law does not address affordability and said that ACORN wants to see rent controls and an end to Right to Buy.

Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent, said 10 years is “way too long” for both the DHS and Awaab’s Law to be brought in to the PRS, and echoed concerns that a future government may backtrack on the plans to extend this regulation.

He also claimed there is “no reason” to wait a decade to roll out Awaab’s Law to private housing as landlords must already fix dangerous hazards by law.

Niamh Evans, policy officer at the Renters’ Reform Coalition, told the meeting that the coalition’s “primary concern” about the act is how well it is enforced.

She claimed councils at the moment are not able to enforce the current rights that renters have, citing figures showing that, in 2021-24, more than a third of councils did not prosecute a single landlord.

In the last three years, only one landlord in London was prosecuted for an illegal eviction, Ms Evans added.

She said: “We would like councils to look at various opportunities to boost their enforcement, whether that’s through on-the-spot fines and new inspection powers, [which] are both enabled by the new act, but also [to look] at some of the existing frameworks that exist, such as expanding selective licensing.”

The meeting also heard concerns that a “two-tier system” could emerge, in which more vulnerable or marginalised tenants end up in an unregulated part of the PRS.

Alva Gotby, solidarity organiser at the London Renters Union, said: “I think that there is the potential that a certain group of landlords might decide that they don’t want to adhere to these new regulations.

“And they might do things like use license agreements for no other reason than that they don’t want to have an assured tenancy in place. 

“So there needs to be a strategy to deal with things like that.”

She also suggested that certain groups could be more exposed to illegal evictions, and pointed out that in the pandemic there was a spike in these types of evictions when tenants could not go through the court system.

Ms Gotby added: “If local authorities don’t have the means or the will to carry out that enforcement and protect the most vulnerable residents, there is a risk that this can create, in certain places, a sort of two-tier system where more vulnerable people, students, disabled people, people who don’t speak English as their first language, are sort of pushed into a more unregulated part of the private rented sector.

“So I think that is something to be aware of.”