Policy background Access to Services
Access to private rented accommodation is restricted by the residential tenancies provisions at Chapter 1 of Part 3 of the Immigration Act 2014 ("the 2014 Act"). These provisions are referred to as the ‘right to rent scheme’. The scheme provides that landlords in the private rented sector should take steps to confirm the lawful immigration status of an individual before entering into an agreement to rent private accommodation to them and makes provision for a civil penalty regime to penalise non-compliance. The scheme was first brought into force on 1 December 2014 in parts of the West Midlands and on 20 October 2015, the Government published the 'Evaluation of the Right to Rent scheme' considering the impact of the scheme over the first six months of operation. On 1 February 2016, the scheme was extended across the rest of England and the Government intends to extend the scheme across the rest of the United Kingdom in the future.
	Despite the requirement to check immigration status before entering into a tenancy agreement a landlord may subsequently discover that their tenant no longer has lawful immigration status. This could be because the tenant’s leave to enter or remain has expired or been curtailed. The existing legislative scheme requires landlords to perform repeat checks on existing tenants and where they discover such a tenant they may obtain a statutory excuse from a civil penalty under section 24 of the 2014 Act by notifying the Secretary of State that the tenant's leave has expired. The landlord may be able to evict the tenant under existing housing legislation but the immigration status of a tenant is not a ground for gaining possession of a property. The Act will enable landlords to obtain possession of their property where their tenant or any occupier of the property no longer has a right to rent under the 2014 Act scheme.
	The main sanction for landlords who fail to perform adequate checks on their tenants will remain a civil penalty under the right to rent scheme. The Act creates four new offences to target those rogue landlords and agents who deliberately and repeatedly fail to comply with the right to rent scheme or fail to evict individuals who they know or have reasonable cause to believe are disqualified from renting as a result of their immigration status.
	The Government believes that historically, it has been easy for illegal migrants to secure UK driving licences and enjoy the privileges of being able to drive and the advantages this brings in securing a settled lifestyle. A policy change in relation to the granting of licences was announced through a Written Ministerial Statement of 25 March 2010 with the effect that all applicants are required to demonstrate that they are lawfully resident in the UK. The 2014 Act extended this policy to provide powers to revoke a UK driving licence held by an illegal migrant. Where a licence is revoked it is an offence to fail to surrender the licence without a reasonable excuse. Over 16,000 driving licenses have been revoked under the powers of the 2014 Act. Revoked driving licences nonetheless remain in circulation. Accordingly, the Government wishes to build on the 2014 Act provisions by ensuring a consequence for illegal migrants using revoked licences. Therefore, the Act provides the police and immigration officers with a new power to search for and seize UK driving licences which are in the possession of a person who is not lawfully resident in the UK.
	The Act also introduces a new criminal offence of driving in the UK whilst an illegal migrant. This fits within the wider agenda of making it difficult for those seeking to establish themselves in the UK unlawfully, and operates in parallel with other new measures with the same aim, including the new offence of illegal working. The new driving offence will apply to those illegally present in the UK, whether they have a driving licence (including a foreign licence) or are driving unlicensed. Upon summary conviction, the court could order a custodial sentence of up to six months and a fine. The court will also have the power to order the forfeiture of the vehicle. In practice, we anticipate that this new offence will be mainly used by the police who, in the course of their work, may encounter illegal migrants driving on UK roads. Vehicles driven by illegal migrants may be detained, pending a decision by the court on forfeiture. The police already hold similar powers in respect of vehicles that are uninsured or driven by an unlicensed driver.
	The 2014 Act created a provision to ensure that illegal migrants are prevented from opening a current account. This provision was brought into force on 12 December 2014. The Home Office provides data on individuals who are known to be in the UK unlawfully to Cifas, an organisation through which information is exchanged to prevent fraud. Banks and building societies then check their prospective account holders against this data. While the 2014 Act measures only apply to new accounts, in his immigration speech on 21 May 2015, the Prime Minister committed to requiring banks and building societies to take action in respect of existing accounts held by illegal migrants.
	The Act places a duty on banks and building societies to perform periodic checks and to notify the Home Office where a person disqualified from holding a current account by reason of their immigration status is identified. The Act specifies that secondary legislation may require the bank or building society to inform the Home Office of all accounts held by the individual concerned, not just current accounts. The Home Office may then either apply to a court to freeze the individual’s accounts, with the possibility of exceptions to enable essential living needs to be met, or may notify the bank or building society that it is under a duty to close the accounts as soon as reasonably practicable. Depending on the circumstances of the case, the bank or building society may delay closure for a reasonable period, for example to allow it to seek repayment of an overdraft or to mitigate the effect of closure on other bodies or persons by or for whom the account is operated. They may alternatively remove a disqualified person from a jointly operated account without closing the account. The bank or building society must provide the Home Office with information about the steps it has taken to comply with this duty.