Law commission proposes major reform of housing law

Law commission proposes major reform of housing law

Law commission proposes major reform of housing law

In a scoping paper published March 2001, the Law Commission calls for a programme of law reform to address the serious inadequacies of existing housing law. The paper – "Reform of Housing Law: A Scoping Paper" – is concerned with the law relating to rented housing, including both the private and social (local authority and housing association) sectors. Its purpose is to determine what the problems are with housing law and to outline the work that needs to be done to solve them.

The problems

The paper identifies the key failings of existing housing law as its amount and complexity. There are:

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  at least 13 different ways in law for a tenant to occupy a dwelling;

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  significant differences on key issues such as security of tenure and the formalities for creating and ending tenancies;

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  three distinct sets of rules about when landlords can gain possession of a property (in all, there are 56 separate grounds for possession);

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  a bewildering range of remedies available to a tenant who has been unlawfully evicted or harassed by his or her landlord.

The result is that:

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  There is too much law.

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  The law is too difficult: much of housing law is incomprehensible to many landlords and most tenants. For tenants, the tenancy agreement is perhaps the most important contract they enter into, yet the law surrounding it is deeply confusing. The private rented sector depends to a large extent on non-professional landlords letting one or two properties, who face similar difficulties.

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  The law costs too much: the complexity of the law increases the cost of legal advise and litigation, which deters both landlords and tenants from seeking legal help when it is necessary to do so.

The commission's proposals

The Law Commission proposes a series of projects to create a reformed code of housing law, to make the law clearer and easier to use for both tenants and landlords. The first phase would aim to establish a simplified and modernised structure of housing tenures. It would address the key issues involved in the creation and ending of residential tenancies. The second phase would consist of two projects: the first dealing with the various rules on succession; the second with the law relating to unlawful eviction and harassment.

These proposals have been developed with considerable assistance from an advisory group including DETR and LCD as well as key housing organisations, like Shelter, the Housing Corporation and the British Property Federation (see under Notes for Editors for the basis of this assistance). The Law Commission would expect to build on this experience, involving a wider range of groups in its future work.

The Commission's work will be dove-tailed with other work being undertaken by the DETR on related topics, such as the enforcement of housing standards, repairing obligations and disputes over deposits.

The Commission's work provides the way to take forward work on the simpler and more flexible form of tenure that the DETR is committed to by its recent housing statement ("Quality and Choice: A Decent Home for All – The Way Forward for Housing", DETR December 2000, see chapter 8).