The
new measures to combat illegal immigration announced in the
Queen's Speech earlier on this year continue to court controversy
both in the industry and outside of it.
The rules place the onus on landlords to ensure that any new
tenants are legal residents in the UK by taking copies of a
checklist of documents. Those documents include either a valid
British Passport or the provision of birth certificate, national
insurance number and driving licence/naturalisation documents/right
of abode certificates, and will have to be supplied for all adults
living within the property.
Landlords who are found to have tenants without the necessary
documentation could face fines of up to £3,000 as of April 2014.
The measures have come under fire for several reasons, and scrutiny
has now increased as the National Landlord Association's tenant
index reveals that almost 20% of tenants would be reluctant to
reveal their immigration status to a landlord or letting agent.
That only further raises the question of whether landlords would
be as willing to take on tenants with complex immigration status
under the new plans, as they would then have to keep up to date
with their legality to avoid punishment. The incentive to undertake
further administration on top of the arduous responsibility that
the ruling has already placed on agents and landlords is
non-existent.
Most of the controversy surrounding the new immigration plan is
that it has not been properly thought through, as it is seen as
increasing the regulatory burden on landlords and letting agents
with little impact on actually reducing the problem of illegal
immigration.
Any landlord or letting agent who is found to have allowed an
illegal immigrant to live within their property for the first time
will incur a fine of £1,000 per tenant as of April 2014. However,
if any landlord has received a warning about illegal tenants in
their property, the fine will be increased to £3,000 per tenant.
The fines may be extended to families who take on lodgers as well,
although the actual fine would vary for these instances. For all of
the above fines, the tenant would have to have entered the property
after February 2014.
Immigration checks will have to form part of a landlord's
overall referencing process. To relieve the burden of referencing
and get
2 credit checks for the price of 1, sign up for Lettingref.
