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Landlords hit out at "heavy-handed" tenancy deposit
22 Mar 2007
The new tenancy deposit scheme due to come into force on April 6th has been criticised by incensed landlords who view the system as overly severe.
Aimed at protecting deposits from rogue landlords who never pay them back to tenants, the legislation provides three schemes which include landlords paying a premium if they want to keep the deposit themselves or handing it over to a third party.
But according to Barry Markham, chief executive of the National Federation of Residential Landlords, this will unfairly penalise the majority of landlords.
As well as disputing whether the accompanying dispute resolution service was necessary, he said of the deposit scheme: "The system seems very heavy-handed and requires massive bureaucracy to deal with a small problem."
These criticisms were echoed by the Landlord Association who said in a statement: "To penalise all landlords into handing over deposits is ridiculous. Some rogue landlords do exist but far more rogue tenants disappear owing rent and damages."
In order to solve both problems, the association suggested landlord accreditation coupled with registration of all tenants to ensure all parties are protected.
However, civil servant Phil Alker defended the deposit scheme, pointing out that nearly a fifth of tenants' deposits are never paid back.
"We acknowledge that deposit fraud is a minority problem, but no government can legislate selectively. So the majority of good landlords have to comply along with the few bad ones," he said.
