Conferences
Judith Dunn, Director of the Scottish Association of Landlords
Established in 2001 as a limited company, The Scottish Association of Landlords is now the largest and only dedicated national landlords’ organisation that represents landlords throughout Scotland. With 12 local branches the organisation has links with every Scottish local authority and actively campaigns at local and national level on behalf of member landlords. Judith Dunn herself in a working HMO landlord and Director of the Association.
The Scottish private rented sector is hugely diverse. The average landlord has one – three properties and there are 233,000 households living in the private rented sector. A recent survey by the Association showed that 85% of tenants are satisfied or highly satisfied with their landlord, but generally landlords have a low level understanding of the legislation.
Properties and property condition varies greatly. Whilst there are a large number of rural rented properties, 200 year old tenement blocks feature heavily in the cities. Edinburgh, where around 17% of the population live in private rented accommodation and where there are around 4,000 HMOs has many more private households than anywhere else in Scotland.
Scotland, with legislation set by both Whitehall and Holyrood, has a different HMO definition from England and Wales and the requirements for mandatory licensing are different. All 32 local authorities apply different licensing conditions and lengths of licence which makes things confusing for landlords with properties in more than one area.
The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood has introduced legislation which saw the formation of the Repairing Standard and the Private Rented Housing Panel which allows a private tenant to take their landlord to the Panel to enforce them carrying out repairs to a property.
However, consumer protection and local housing allowance are not devolved issues and there are the same difficulties with these in Scotland as across the UK.
Looking at the wider housing policy, there are 2012 homelessness targets where the Parliament has undertaken for everyone who is unintentionally homeless to have a home by 2012.
The Landlord Accreditation Scotland scheme is run in partnership with the Scottish Parliament. Compulsory registration of landlords was introduced under a national scheme in April 2006 which covers landlords, agents and properties. This includes a fit and proper person test and there is a fine of up to £5,000 for non-registration. There are forums to increase landlords’ education and training and registration is an on-line scheme so that you can look up any landlord’s details (excluding their phone number).
So far, 148,285 landlords have registered, but only five have been refused and only one landlord has seen their registration revoked. This leaves about 20,000 landlords (about 10% of the total) not registered, but there appears to be no action taken with them. The system is cumbersome and time consuming with 32 different registers and landlords having to register their individual properties in each local authority area they operate and paying registration fees to each local authority.
Improvements are being made, but the scheme needs to be better resourced and support given for the people enforcing it.
Looking to the future, there is yet to be a tenancy deposit scheme for Scotland.