News from the Residential Property Investor, the bi-monthly magazine for RLA members other artilces from the April / May 2001 issue RPI news archive

Strategy failure criticised - April / May 2001

'Profoundly disappointing' is how Richard Lambert, the British Property Federation director responsible for its commercial and residential section has described the Government's failure to set out a strategy for development of the private rented sector.

'If you want to know what the Government's strategy for the private rented sector is, it's simple, there isn't one', he told a London property conference last month. Most of what if contained in the Housing Policy Statement amounted to 'little more than tinkering with issues which are marginal to the concerns of the majority of the sector', he said.

And pressing ahead with proposals for the selective licensing of landlords in areas of low demand and for making payment of housing benefit conditional on the quality of property were 'poorly conceived and probably unworkable', claimed Lambert.

'The industry's views appear to have been ignored. Why, when the sector needs more than £1bn of new investment every year just to keep pace with household growth is there no attempt to address the need to secure investment on that scale?'
 

other artilces from the April / May 2001 issue

• Incentives and Disincentives
• Mixed messages on rising market
• RLA promotes understanding
• Landlords offered renovation finance
• Makeover for possession rules
• BPF urges take up of pilot deposit schemes
• Landlord cleared of manslaughter
• Strategy failure criticised
• In brief
• Brown's conversion
• Easy PC record keeping packages