London based Landlord and Property Expert

Blog
TV
Showreel
Profile
Fact File
Radio
Press
Contact

Landlord Immigration Checks: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

I did a piece for Channel 4 news recently about the government’s proposed landlord immigration checks.  It was clear that the news team sent to make the film thought this was a cynical attempt by the government to pull in votes and turn us all into UK border police.  I was ready to support  the NLA line which is that if you’re a good landlord, you should be carrying out checks anyway and that this new regime will not be particularly onerous.  My NLA colleague, Yvonne Baisden,  also appeared on Channel  5 and BBC News and it was interesting to note that media outlets used snippets of us being less than positive: they really wanted us to complain about the measure.   I do have serious reservations and the NLA is also campaigning for some important changes.

This new measure, due to make its way through parliament and come into force in October 2014, will require anybody renting out accommodation in the UK to check that the prospective tenant is legally entitled to live here.  It will also be applied to people letting to lodgers in their own home, letting agents and hotels or guest houses that offer accommodation for 3 months or longer.  Failure to comply will result in a fine of up to £3,000. Thankfully, landlords will not be liable if the tenant sublets the property to a person without lawful immigration status without informing the landlord.  But most controversially, if the tenant’s right to reside will expire before the end of the tenancy, the landlord is expected to conduct a further check and report the tenant to the home office if they do not renew their immigration paperwork.

The government argues that these provisions parallel those required of employers.  Typically they  will check a prospective employee’s passport and take a photocopy and landlords are expected to do the same.  The consultation document states that “landlords are not expected to be experts in detecting fraud.  Unless they accept documents that are readily apparent to an untrained person as being forged or fraudulent, they will have a ‘statutory excuse’ from paying the penalty.”  The home office will operate a helpline to assist landlords with any verification queries.

I am amazed at the number of landlords I meet who do not carry out proper checks on tenants.  I always use tenant referencing agencies to carry out ID and credit file checks plus landlord and employment references.   I have great relationships with all of my tenants and have rarely had problems.  You should never forget that in most cases the tenant has exclusive possession of your asset for a minimum of six months and on the rare occasions when court action is required to evict a tenant it can take 4-5 months.  Under these circumstances it is essential to carry out pre-tenancy proper checks.  I imagine that reference agencies will add immigration checks to their list of tasks and as there is considerable competition and demand in the sector, I don’t see a likelihood of costs increasing.  Remember reference and letting agencies will be carrying out high volumes of checks and they will become very familiar with which documentation is acceptable.  In many ways we have bigger battles to fight with the government, like the growth of Selective Licensing and Article 4 directions that ban shared housing.

The government’s claims that this new measure will add to local authority’s enforcement armoury are also persuasive.  Many rogue and criminal operators prey on vulnerable tenants who do not have legal status, so the prospect of a fine could be a deterrent.

So what are the concerns?  Well let’s look first at the main technical one – the requirement to report tenants whose immigration paperwork expires during the course of the tenancy.  If this happens to an employer, assuming the employee has been with them for less than two years, they can summarily dismiss them without being accused of unfair dismissal.  Although the member of staff would have to leave employment that day, there are no risks to the employer.  But as landlords we are subject to housing legislation and cannot summarily evict a tenant, even if we wanted to, for losing the right of abode in the UK.  The government says that we should simply report them to the home office.  But we know that much of our business relies on good tenant relations, and hassling our tenants repeatedly about their immigration status is unlikely to play well.  Also tenants could understandably become aggrieved if the landlord reports them to the home office.  They may feel desperate, stop paying rent and even become hostile and take out their frustration on the landlord or the property.

The NLA is campaigning to get the government to change these requirements.  I am particularly concerned that landlords would avoid taking tenants with restricted immigration status for fear of repercussions.  This is hopeless for prospective tenants who happen to have short visas and hope to renew them and could be unlawful discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity or race.  It also flies in the face of a number of other government policies, such as a desire to attract overseas students and the best talent for global businesses based in the UK.

There are some other more insidious and worrying dimensions to these proposals.  I have worked for many years as a trainer and diversity consultant and I know that lots of people confuse issues of immigration status and ethnicity.    A BBC report last week demonstrated the blatant discrimination that black applicants can experience.  A white applicant for a flat was offered a viewing by an agent where the black tenant was wrongly told that the same flat had been taken.  The agent said that they were complying with the landlord’s instructions, but this is unlawful.  I hear many anecdotes from landlords who say that they prefer not to house people from certain ethnicities because of one bad experience.  Apart from the social injustice, this attitude just makes bad business sense because the landlord is restricting their pool of applicants and perpetuating their own fixed attitude.

I worry that these immigration checks will make finding rented property for black and ethnic minority tenants even more difficult.  One of my tenants, who kindly allowed the Channel 4 crew to film their home, put it well: “it feels like people are being asked to snoop on one another,” and many landlords complain that we are all being turned into the border police.  Not good for community relations.

The government argues that there is a lot of support for these measures and that it is simply not fair that people who pay nothing into the system should be able to enjoy the benefits of living in the UK.  This argument is flawed as many people here illegally work extremely hard in the shadow economy and are helping to regenerate the UK.  Measures like these checks will push them even further underground and into the hands of exploitative criminal landlords. I would challenge the notion that the threat of a £3,000 fine will be a deterrent.  Only this weekend I was told of a 5 bed house where 20 people are living and the landlord takes £50 a week from each of them.  The fine is a mere three weeks rent and these rogue operators know that.

We were reminded this week of vans with adverts telling people to go home.  I know we have to try and work with the coalition on reasonable proposals in the hope that we might get better or less regulation in return.  But I’m left feeling that this is dogwhistle politics, with the government seeking votes from an unpalatable xenophobic end of the political spectrum.  I rent a shop to a Caribbean takeaway and this week Betty the cook – a Jamaican woman who has lived in London for many years – asked me if I had any rooms.   I worry that her housing options through fear, prejudice or misunderstanding may diminish and that’s not good for our business or community relations.

 

Leave a Reply

Latest Blog

©Richard Blanco 2019

Close Menu