In his first speech as housing minister, Grant Shapps announced that the government was scrapping recommendations to further regulate the private rented sector. He said further regulation would ‘create burdensome red tape and bureaucracy’ for good landlords. Local authorities will be urged to use their existing powers to tackle rogue landlords.

Research shows that, over the last century, there has developed an increasing reliance on the private rented sector to accommodate a diverse market, ranging from housing benefit claimants to luxury properties for business people. It is this flexibility which has given rise to the private rented sector’s expansion.

As a Law Society housing committee member, I worked on draft responses to the Law Commission’s 2007 consultation paper Encouraging Responsible Letting. It is unfortunate timing that the culmination of work in this area coincided with a change of government, just when the summary of responses from stakeholders was about to be progressed.

The new government has acted with a lack of foresight in not adopting recommendations that could make a real impact in creating a much-needed framework to ensure a sustainable private rented sector. A new regulatory structure was considered necessary to encourage compliance with legislative provisions already in place, in circumstances where too many rented properties are poorly managed. The focus was on creating a National Register of Landlords, recommended as a means of: providing better safeguards for tenants; assisting local authority enforcement activity; providing information and support for landlords; and seeking better evidence about the sector.

There are one million landlords in England, of which nearly 75% are individuals not registered or regulated by any specific body. Tales abound of competing interests of landlords and tenants, but conflicts also exist between landlords and their appointed managing agents. Unregulated agents often do not have professional indemnity insurance or audited bank accounts. Invariably, they hold the client’s funds with their business funds, which offers no protection to a landlord if the agent’s business fails.

The general consensus is that local authorities do not have the resources to undertake adequate enforcement action. The residential market remains a sector where regulation has developed piecemeal. The current system of achieving compliance through local authority enforcement has not proved effective solely because of a lack of resources, but also because of the piecemeal way in which certain housing management standards have evolved to regulate landlord activities. A range of remedies may be invoked, involving both criminal and civil sanctions; but there is no central, overarching body that can monitor if powers are being used.

There was agreement among stakeholders that the new measures should not deter new providers. They envisaged a ‘light touch’ national register of every private landlord in England. This was to have worked alongside an improved complaints procedure for tenants to register complaints about sub-standard landlords, who could then in some circumstances be removed from the register.

It was recognised that such a scheme may require tenants to report sub-standard housing in circumstances where they fear to do so because of the threat of eviction. Plans were under discussion to bolster the proposed national register with a regulatory body to monitor and enforce housing standards and prevent misuse of section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 notices.

Citizens Advice Bureau report The Tenant Dilemma considered how some landlords would use section 21 notices to evict tenants who complained about disrepair to their accommodation. The report recommended a mechanism for tenants to halt their eviction under section 21 if they could show it was a retaliatory eviction. The paper suggested use of section 21 notices could be restricted to landlords registered with the national accredited scheme.

There is a need for further debate about retaliatory evictions, even if the better regulation framework has been discarded.

Debra Wilson is a partner at Anthony Gold and a member of the Law Society housing law committee