It’s time, surely, for government to crackdown not just on rogue agents and landlords but on rogue councils that confuse the public over the private rental sector.
At the moment, there are reasonably clear national guidelines (well, national usually to England, with narrow differences in Wales and Scotland) over many rental issues: for example, there are nationally-agreed definitions of HMOs, an England-wide ban on levying fees on tenants, and national requirements for agents to be in redress schemes.
But in addition there are three areas with few or no national standards – and as a result, local councils are making a pig’s ear of them.