ROOF Blog

The Government has informed the National Landlords Association (NLA) that the Assured shorthold tenancy (AST) threshold will rise to £100,000 on October 1 2010. The proposal to increase the threshold had been broadly welcomed by the NLA as an attempt to offer greater clarity and transparency for landlords and tenants. But it seems that a quirk of the process means the change will be retrospective and will be applied to existing tenancies. As a result, any tenancy with an annual rent between £25,000 and £100,000 in existence on 1 October 2023 will become an AST overnight. The NLA says the proposals have the potential to be damaging to a significant number of landlords who entered into contractual tenancy agreements in good faith. Landlords and tenants will no longer be able to negotiate individual terms for their tenancy and the rights and responsibilities associated with the Housing Act 1988 will be extended to these higher rent properties.

Tenants, MPs, local councillors and trade unionists from across Britain will come together on March 19 at the Defend Council Housing (DCH) national conference to defend the future of council housing and demand that politicians listen to council tenants in the run up to the general election. DCH campaigns against ‘privatisation’ and for direct investment to provide decent, affordable, secure and accountable housing. The conference will discuss proposals for the future funding of council housing and hear from local campaigns fighting to insist Government meets its commitment to bring all housing up to a decent standard with no strings attached.

Liberty and Housing Justice are among the charities that have become so alarmed about the ways in which the human rights of rough sleepers are increasingly being threatened by the authorities that they have produced ‘The Rights Guide for Rough Sleepers’.

In the run-up to the London Olympics in 2012, which is also Mayor Boris Johnson’s deadline for ending rough sleeping in London, the number and the severity of enforcement measures against rough sleepers has been growing.

The guide will clearly set out the rights of homeless people so that they know what their legal position is.

The UK has ratified a United Nations convention enshrining the human rights of disabled people. The government minister for disabled people Jonathan Shaw said there are more than 10 million disabled people in the UK whose rights would be strengthened.

A parliamentary joint select committee on human rights has warned that an increasing number of vulnerable people could become homeless under the new Policing and Crime Bill. The Bill will introduce powers to close brothels and curb antisocial behaviour by giving police the power to direct a child as young as 10 to leave an area without talking into account their safety or where they will go. The committee says the proposals risk criminalising rather than protecting some of the most vulnerable members of society.

A new British bill of rights was outlined in a Green Paper in parliament yesterday. It will enshrine entitlements to welfare, equal treatment, housing, children’s well-being and the NHS, according to justice minister Jack Straw. However, critics were divided about its likely impact in strengthening rights or if it was simply a ‘cosmetic exercise’.