Not all legislation is bad, argues Bob Young, managing director of Capital Home Loans
The new coalition government has clearly wasted no time in scrapping a number of plans that the previous administration held dear and were likely to either continue with or implement if they had regained power. In the housing market it ‘suspended’ Home Information Packs immediately and last week this was followed by the decision not to go through with policies such as the Landlords’ register and the regulation of letting agents.
Like much of the last government’s legislation there was some good and some bad in amongst the scrapped proposals however, the all-encompassing, over-riding priority for the new team is the cutting of the budget deficit and in such an environment these sorts of proposals were always going to be cut wholesale rather than perhaps a more preferable sorting of the wheat from the chaff.
The National Landlords Register was truly another layer of bureaucracy in an already crowded area and given that local authorities already have the power to deal with landlords who provide poor quality housing, it is difficult to see the further benefits it would have brought. Grant Shapps, the new housing minister, called the register “well meaning but flawed”” and it would be hard to disagree