Tenant Fees Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Maria Caulfield and Daniel Zeichner

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 7th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Maria Caulfield]

Q As a trading standards officer, as the Bill stands would that be difficult to—

Alex McKeown: To prove beyond all reasonable doubt? Yes, I think so.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Q I want to pick up on the point in the evidence from the CTSI about the rise of alternative business models—certainly in my city, and I also did some work with my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden) in Blackpool on this issue. I just wonder whether you feel that the Bill as it is currently framed would deal with some of those issues, or whether there is a danger that people might move to using some of those platforms to evade the focus of the Bill.

Alex McKeown: The alternative business model is often rogue agents trying to avoid protecting deposits, to avoid giving legal agreements and, in time, to charge the tenant fees. That is also why I feel the burden of proof needs to be back down to the civil burden of proof. It will be difficult to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that somebody is a letting agent and not a membership club. You can see the evidence we need to prove it from the legislation that relates to the membership clubs, and from some of the legal precedents about what constitutes an assured shorthold tenancy.

To give an example, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets took a letting agent to court that said, “We don’t have to join a redress scheme, because we’re not a letting agent, because we only issue a licence to occupy.” The London Borough of Tower Hamlets then had to go into housing law and ask, “Is this tenancy a licence to occupy or an assured shorthold tenancy?” The judge in that tribunal case said, “On the balance of probability, you are a letting agent and should be a member of a scheme.”

That is what we need for the alternative business models. We need to able to prove that, on the balance of probability, they are not membership clubs, the agreements they are giving out are tenancies, and the fees they are charging will be prohibited fees.