Following the State Opening of Parliament, HRH The Prince of Wales delivered the ‘Queen’s Speech’, on behalf of HM The Queen for the first time in 59 years, laying out her Government’s ambitions for the next Parliamentary session.
Before the Speech, the Levelling Up Secretary raised housing as a key driver of both levelling up and tackling the cost-of-living crisis. The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill contains many of the policies trailed in February’s Levelling Up White Paper, and will also include a number of policies from the significantly watered-down Planning White Paper from 2020. It is speculated that this Bill will be published in the coming days.
Key points and Bills included in the speech and accompanying documents were:
- Social Housing Regulation Bill: The Bill will increase the rights of social housing tenants' rights to better homes and enhance their ability to hold their landlords to account by allowing the Regulator of Social Housing to intervene with landlords who are underperforming on consumer issues. Additionally, it will implement tenant satisfaction measures which will allow tenants to measure their landlord's performance.
- Renters Reform Bill: This seeks to overturn section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act, which allows landlords to evict tenants without reason and with just eight weeks’ notice. The Bill also applies the legally binding 'Decent Homes Standard' and introduces a new Ombudsman for private landlords with the aim to resolve disputes without court proceedings.
- Housing Reform: The Government will be taking forward a 'comprehensive' programme to reform the leasehold market as part of a wider housing agenda to 'level up' homeownership. Ambitious housing missions will be set for renters to have a secure path to ownership, as well as to reduce the number of non-decent rented homes.
Andrew Bulmer, CEO of The Property Institute commented, “This speech contains some significant, if widely trailed, announcements for the PRS sector, though the impact will be greatest for ‘mom and pop’ buy to let landlords rather than ‘build to rent’ operators. Announcements for reforming the leasehold sector were limited and simply repeats of measures already in progress. Still missing was a commitment to better regulation of managing agents, which the sector is urgently calling for."
