Policy background Housing management
This Act seeks to improve the housing system and the way it is managed. The Act puts in place measures to ensure that social homes support those most in need. Protections for private tenants are introduced so that they know that rogue landlords will be tackled and forced to improve or leave the sector, stopping them profiting from dangerous or badly managed properties. The Act allows protections for landlord and tenant money held by property agents to be introduced and a power to require private sector landlords to meet new electrical safety standards. Local authorities will be equipped with greater tools to know and meet the housing need in their area.
	Social housing is let at low rents on a secure basis to those in housing need. However, there are approximately 300,000 social rented tenants (across the local authority and housing association sectors) with household taxable incomes over £30,000 per annum, including around 50,000 with taxable incomes in excess of £50,000 per year. The Act links more closely social housing rents to the income of social tenants.
	Since 2012, local authorities have been able to grant flexible tenancies but they are not taking advantage of this flexibility.  Instead, the majority of council tenancies continue to be granted on a ‘lifetime’ basis meaning that tenants have the right to live in their social home for the rest of their life (provided they keep to the conditions of their tenancy), regardless of how the household’s circumstances change in the future. Under this Act local authorities can generally only grant new social tenancies of between 2 and 10 years, but up to 19 years where the tenant has children and must carry out a review of the household’s circumstances at the end of the fixed term. Further, family members who succeed to a lifetime tenancy may only be granted a 5 year tenancy.
	There are a small number of rogue or criminal landlords who knowingly rent out unsafe or substandard accommodation. The Act introduces a number of measures to give local authorities tools to ban rogue landlords or property agents, preventing them from exploiting more tenants.
	Local authorities have a duty to review housing conditions so they can take action to improve them. However, they frequently have a limited picture of the size and scale of the private rented sector in their area. Through this Act the Government allows them access to data relating to nearly 3 million tenancy deposits.
	This Act reduces the regulatory controls for private registered providers of social housing to increase the freedoms of registered providers to manage their housing stock while maintaining protections for tenants and the viability of the sector. The Act also introduces a Special Administration Regime for private registered providers of social housing that are at risk of entering insolvency proceedings.