ROOF Blog

Meanwhile the Association of Residential Lettings Agents (Arla) announced it is introducing a licensing scheme for its members and a code of practice. Under the scheme agents will have to hold a professional qualification relating to lettings, take part in continuing professional development, have indemnity insurance and an annual independent audit carried out on client’s funds. If an agent went out of business any money it owed to clients would also be protected. The scheme would ‘create the gold standard for letting agents in the UK’, Arla said.

A new code of practice laying down how young people should be treated during detention or while being transferred into local authority care came into force yesterday. The code will ensure that children have their asylum applications dealt with quickly. The UK Border Agency will introduce a duty of care regarding the welfare of children into the new Border, Citizenship and Immigration Bill.

Ministers have decided to turn the voluntary code of practice operated by the banks into a legally binding one - and banks risk being penalised if they do not offer customers a ‘fair deal’. The banks have been criticised for reviewing loans to individuals and small businesses and changing conditions overnight, and the code will compel financial institutions to make customers aware of the best deals and stop them withdrawing credit for no good reason. The Financial Services Authority will be granted powers to impose unlimited fines on those who refuse to change bad practices.

According to a report in The Times, the new lending panel announced in Monday’s pre-budget report to be chaired by chancellor Alistair Darling and Peter Mandelson, business secretary, is to insist that banks sign up to a new code of good lending practice. The panel, set up to monitor lending to business and households, expect the code to be voluntary. But The Times said it had been told that if banks do not improve their performance they could become a legal regulation to be policed by the Financial Services Authority. Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England admitted that despite the money already put in to the banking system by the government it may not be enough: ‘We may not have come to the end of the recapitalisation process’.