Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-01
Topic: Housing
John Lytton (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I hate to voice a tone of slight dissent from what the noble Lord has introduced because I know where he is coming from. I declare an interest because I am a private rented sector landlord. Some of our assured shorthold tenants had six months or one-year lettings originally and now double-digit years later are still there, with or without dependent children. I think we have seen at least two families grow up and the next generation start to fly the nest. I am very proud of that. The critical point is that there is no bar in letting longer term at present There are also many reasons why it is convenient for both parties to rent shorter term. I live in an area that is customarily known as the "Gatwick diamond". It is an area of Sussex and part of Surrey where the great driver is the industrial and commercial activity associated with Gatwick Airport. Many people move in or have temporary secondments to places such as that or indeed may be seconded elsewhere to postings abroad for varying times—six, 12, 18 months and so on. This applies whether they are landlord or tenant. Whether it is job secondment, moving home or being in the process of selling a property somewhere else and moving in, my wife and I have a constant source of applicants for accommodation. There is a need for the short term—it is very important and part of the fluidity of this section of the market. Another thing I would be slightly fearful of in the noble Lord’s amendment is when a buy-to-let situation exists on that sort of mortgage. The deferral of the reversion might have undesirable effects in terms of how the mortgagee would see the risk. A mortgagee, of course, needs to be in a position to lay claim to the property and dispose of it on the open market to redeem the mortgage, and needs to be able to do so at reasonably short notice. That obviously should not be operated to the disadvantage of a contractual tenant under an AST, but if it is deferred for three years, I can see that that might interfere with the way in which a mortgagee could perceive that particular bit of the risk The basic premise is a little bit unbalanced as between the parties. I have some sympathy with the noble Lord here, but not every part of the country and not every sector suffer from the issue that I suspect this amendment is trying to address. The private rented sector is important. I like to think that most private sector landlords think as I do, offering a quality product and treating our tenants as decent people, as human beings, as neighbours, as friends and, indeed, seeing their children grow up and taking great pleasure in that However, we have been down this road before on creeping security of tenure. Memories are quite long in that respect. I remember that from the 1960s until the 1980s the private rented sector was more or less annihilated in all but name. I would not like to think that the message here is that this is a harbinger of that situation. With the benefit of those thoughts, I suggest that the Committee should not go along with this amendment, although I have some sympathy with the rationale behind it.