Share your views on planned changes for the Decent Homes Standard

The Renters’ Rights Bill (RRB) has reached the report stage in the House of Lords, with just the 3^rd Reading to go before it returns to the House of Commons for a final consideration of any amendments. After that, it must gain Royal Assent before becoming law.

With a lot of different measures contained within the Bill, we believe they won’t all come into force at the same time. For example, while something like giving tenants the right to request a pet is a relatively straightforward change that could be enacted fairly quickly, the proposed abolishing of Section 21 will have knock-on effects on many different areas of letting, so we expect that to take longer and potentially have a phased introduction.

Meanwhile, the Government has already started moving forward on rented sector reforms by launching a consultation on its proposals for revising the Decent Homes Standard (DHS) and extending its scope from the social rented sector to the PRS.

Private landlords are already required to comply with various minimum standards of health and safety, including:

• Making sure properties are ‘fit for human habitation’ at the beginning of the tenancy and throughout (as per the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018).
• Keeping properties in a ‘reasonable state of repair’.
• Ensuring homes are free of the most severe hazards as categorised in the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), which is what local councils use to base their assessments on.
• Securing gas and electrical safety certificates and meeting minimum energy efficiency requirements.

However, ’fit’ and ‘reasonable’ are open to interpretation, and much of the current guidance is not specific, making it hard for landlords to be certain their properties are compliant, and for tenants to know whether they have a valid complaint if they don’t feel a property is up to scratch. The revised DHS will remove this uncertainty by introducing a legally binding minimum set of standards for property condition in the PRS.

A recent review into the DHS as it stands in the social sector revealed a number of issues, including:

• A failure to adequately protect against unacceptable levels of damp and mould.
• A failure to prevent serious disrepair.
• Concerns about tenant safety.
• Outdated requirements around thermal comfort.
• Too much “jargon” that can make the DHS difficult to understand and enforce.

Here are some of the main changes proposed in the consultation, which are based on the review findings:

• Updating the definition of “disrepair”. Currently, it states that a component must be both old and in poor condition, but given that things can break at any age, the proposal is to remove “old”.
• Revising the list of building components that must be kept in a reasonable state of repair. More components are being added to the list, and there will be a specific explanation of what would constitute each component being in disrepair.
• Revising the approach to facilities so landlords will need to provide three out of the following four facilities:
  • A kitchen with adequate space and layout
  • An appropriately located bathroom and WC
  • Adequate external noise insulation
  • Adequate size and layout of common entrance areas for blocks of flats
• Considering new home security requirements - including whether landlords should have to comply with the same ‘Part Q’ building regulations as new homes when windows and doors are replaced (currently, that’s not necessary).
• Introducing a new standard for damp and mould. This would be based on the current HHSRS assessment, which scores damp and mould so it falls into 10 bands, from A (the most dangerous) to J. The proposal is that any damp and mould that is in band H or higher would result in a failure of the standard.

As with all lettings legislation, there is a fine balance between tenant comfort and safety and making requirements too onerous for landlords. So it’s important that as many landlords, agents and tenants as possible participate in this consultation, which will run until 10^th September.

You can have your say now by completing the online survey on Citizen Space.

And if you have any questions about the proposals and how they might affect you, we’re always here to help. Just get in touch with your local branch and have a chat to one of our lettings experts.