The Tenant Fees Bill has had its second reading. The current Bill and its progress are here. There is a lot to digest in the Bill and I suspect there will be amendments on route. There are a whole new range of civil penalties, possible offences and restrictions on service of a section 21 forthcoming.

Meanwhile, the Licensing of Houses in Multiple Occupation (Mandatory Conditions of Licences) (England) Regulations 2018 have been made and will come into effect on 1 October 2018. Amongst other things, these regulations set minimum room sizes for HMOs:

• (a)  to ensure that the floor area of any room in the HMO used as sleeping accommodation by one person aged over 10 years is not less than 6.51 square metres;
• (b)  to ensure that the floor area of any room in the HMO used as sleeping accommodation by two persons aged over 10 years is not less than 10.22 square metres;
• (c) to ensure that the floor area of any room in the HMO used as sleeping accommodation by one person aged under 10 years is not less than 4.64 square metres;
• (d) to ensure that any room in the HMO with a floor area of less than 4.64 square metres is not used as sleeping accommodation.

This will apply to all new licences after 1 October 2018, with an 18 month compliance period. I suspect this will be a bumpy ride…

And lastly, if you are reading this by email subscription, we have adopted the same approach to GDPR as the Information Commissioner did to their newsletter. You signed up for this, in the course of which we told you we won’t use your email address for any other purpose other than sending you the updates you signed up for. Unsubscribe and we delete your data. So, basically, we already have informed consent. And there is an unsubscribe link at the top of every email. (I have had emails from people saying ‘how do I unsubscribe?’ – there it is, right at the top, first thing you see.) For everyone else reading on the site, we’ve had the annoying cookie consent thing up for ages. So, I get to be smug and you don’t get yet another email.

Lastly – the committee date for the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill is still not set, but we’re hopeful it will be very soon. Parliament is a strange place…