Speaking to Shelter

Dr Henry Dawson, CIEH Housing Advisory Panel member and Senior Lecturer in Housing and Public Health at Cardiff Metropolitan University, reflects on his experience of speaking on behalf of CIEH at a recent event organised by the housing and homelessness charity Shelter.

I was delighted, as a member of the CIEH Housing Advisory Panel, to speak at a recent Shelter event entitled ‘Spotlight on Disrepair and Housing Conditions’. I ran a workshop in which I provided an update on the private rented sector. Other speakers at the event included the Chief Executive of Shelter and representatives from the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Housing Ombudsman Service and the Regulator of Social Housing.

The Renters (Reform) Bill contains important changes to the law for the private rented sector. CIEH has been working with the Renters' Reform Coalition, which has been lobbying for changes to the Bill. The coalition includes the likes of Shelter and Generation Rent and, when combined, these organisations form quite a potent body.

Getting ourselves out there and forming relationships with organisations sharing common interests is good for the profession and good for the profile of CIEH. That’s why it is so important that we are receiving invitations to attend and speak at events.

Digging around in the national data sets for the private rented sector is actually rather interesting. I had the standard preconceptions of landlords as male, middle-aged and owning 1-2 properties. The English Housing Survey finds that actually only half are male and 39% of them now own 2-4 rental properties. This probably reflects landlords either building portfolios and/ or leaving the sector following the legislation and tax changes. Only 43% own just one rental property, whilst 18% own almost half of all tenanted properties. When asked about leaving the sector, about 22% wanted to reduce their portfolio or leave the sector altogether whilst only 11% wanted to increase their portfolio.

Speaking at events such as this one also provides a valuable opportunity to tackle some of the negative publicity regarding housing enforcement. I had put aside some time to tell the attendees about the fallacy of focusing entirely on formal enforcement as a measurement of the level of local authority activity in the sector. The perk of being an academic is that you can draw from a range of research on the sector. I was able to put across just how much informal work was going on out there. Data on enforcement levels is captured in all sorts of different ways, however, and presenting an industry-wide picture of our informal activity and its impact is quite tricky.

The Renters (Reform) Bill was the main focus of my talk. This Bill is the greatest change to housing legislation in two decades. It also presents some eyewatering enforcement problems. If just 5% of rental properties aren’t registered with the new portal or the Ombudsman, then local authorities are looking at 100s or 1000s of enforcement cases. At present it is very unclear how that will all be funded, particularly given our current recruitment concerns.

I rounded off with some coverage of the proposed changes to the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP), Awaab’s Law, and the National Residential Landlords Association’s current attempt to get rid of selective licensing.

These events are a great chance to fly the flag for our profession and to get our messages out there to a wider audience. I hope the session was well received and that they will have us back again next year. They seemed pretty happy!

Hear more from Dr Henry Dawson at the CIEH Housing and Health Conference which takes place online on 21-22 May 2024. Henry will be leading a session on the Renters (Reform) Bill and the implications for environmental health.