Renting Homes: The Final Report - Law Commission

(4) such other aspects of Housing Law as may be agreed between
the Law Commission, the Department of the Environment, Transport
and the Regions and the Lord Chancellor’s Department. 3
1.8 It was always envisaged that the project would be undertaken in two phases. The
original intention was to deal with item (1) in the first phase, leaving items (2) and
(3) to the second. As phase one progressed, it became clear that succession
could not be left to phase two. Nor could other issues about how people live in
their homes, specifically joint occupation and transfer, be omitted. They were
added to phase one.
OUR GENERAL APPROACH
1.9 In carrying out our work, the Commission has had three principal objectives in
mind:
(1) simplification;
(2) increased comprehensibility;
(3) flexibility.
Simplification
1.10 The provision of housing has long been subject to regulation, initially by the
common law, but over the last 100 years increasingly by statute. Most, if not all,
advanced countries have housing legislation. The question is not whether there
should be regulatory intervention, but how it can be done well rather than badly.
1.11 In this country, there is widespread agreement that the current law regulating
rented housing is too complicated. This has significant drawbacks. A legal
framework that is too complicated cannot achieve its policy objectives. 4 Those
whom the law is designed to protect cannot use its protection. Those whose
behaviour is sought to be regulated are not influenced by what they cannot
understand.
1.12 The Better Regulation Task Force 5 says simplification includes three elements:
(1) “Deregulation” – removing regulations from the statute book, leading to
greater liberalisation of previously regulated regimes;
3
Now the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Department for Constitutional Affairs,
respectively.
4 An early comment on the effects of excessive complexity in housing law is to be found in
Parry v Harding [1925] 1 KB 111. Lord Hewart CJ observed (at p 114): “It is deplorable that
in dealing with such a matter as this, a Court, and still more a private individual, and most
of all a private individual who lives in a small tenement, should have to make some sort of
path through the labyrinth and jungle of these sections and schedules. One would have
thought that this was a matter above all others which the Legislature would take pains to
make abundantly clear.”
5 Regulation – Less is More: Reducing Burdens, Improving Outcomes (March 2005).
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