Upcoming changes to Right to Rent legislation pose the risk of additional discriminations for tenants, according to JMW Solicitors.
From September 2022, Biometric Residence Cards and Permits and Frontier Worker Permits will no longer be acceptable for Right to Rent checks in England.
For the rest of the UK and Northern Ireland, the Home Office will require the tenant to register with a certified identity service provider and then for that provider to provide agents and landlords with a check using Identity Document Validation Technology.
These changes “potentially open up a new avenue of discrimination” for some tenants, according to JMW Solicitors partner David Smith.
He argues this complexity may disadvantage tenants who cannot easily register with IDSPs, “as those tenants who cannot register easily or elect not to will find it harder to rent property because agents will want to deal with tenants that they can quickly check with minimal risk.”
The commercial litigation expert also questions if the government has put enough guidance in place for these new rules.
“What is not clear is whether tenants might potentially have to register with multiple ID checking services as there are bound to be more than one such provider in the market,” says Smith.
“For agents the changes present the challenge of incorporating all of this into their processes and ensuring that their staff are aware of the myriad complex checking mechanisms to ensure they avoid discrimination.”
Concerns over discrimination have been raised before by lobbyists, who have called for Right to Rent to be scrapped.
In 2019, when the Conservative Party was undergoing a leadership contest, a coalition of several bodies including the Residential Landlords Association and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants agreed the legislation could cause discrimination.
At the time, Nicolas Hatton, chief executive of The3million, which supports UK-based EU citizens – called for the government to “end the discrimination” and added: “Two-thirds of EU citizens in the UK live in private rented housing and will be affected if this failed scheme continues.”
