Renting Homes: The Final Report - Law Commission

(2) “Consolidation” – bringing together different regulations into a more
manageable form and restating the law more clearly. By improving
transparency and understanding, it should reduce compliance costs;
(3) “Rationalisation” – using “horizontal” legislation to replace a variety of
sector specific “vertical” regulations.
1.13 Our Bill achieves all these objectives. It offers a fundamental restatement of the
law that significantly improves transparency and understanding – particularly
through the use of model contracts. 6 It rationalises sector-specific rules (for
example current legal distinctions between local authorities and housing
associations, and between the public sector and private sector) to eliminate
unnecessary differences between them. This enables both the social and private
sectors of the rental housing market to operate with greater freedom. Although
our draft Bill does not include schedules of repeals, enactment will result in the
repeal of a great deal of existing legislation.
Increased comprehensibility
1.14 Central to our recommendations is an emphasis on what we call the consumer
protection approach. In many contexts, Parliament passes legislation which
implies protective terms into consumer contracts. We have taken this a step
further. In the same way that Parliament has provided that employers must
provide employees with a copy of their employment contract, so here we
recommend that landlords should provide their occupiers with a written statement
of their occupation contract. We want both landlords and occupiers to be able
easily to find out their rights and obligations. The written statement expressly sets
out those matters which Parliament wants to regulate.
1.15 The impact of our approach can be seen in the illustrative model contracts we
have provided. In just over twenty pages we have shown that is it possible to set
out a statement of rights and obligations that reflects the legal relationship – as
regulated by Parliament – between landlord and occupier. These will be
supplemented by guidance which explains those matters which it is hard to
summarise in the contract or which do not readily fit into it. Many local authorities
and registered social landlords already adopt this practice; and, for the private
sector, there is already a good range of guidance booklets available from the
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. 7 Such publications can be adapted to the
scheme we recommend. Thus the recommended scheme will ensure that all
occupiers benefit from the provision of this information.
1.16 Many landlord-tenant disputes currently arise from ignorance. Our recommended
scheme, with its emphasis on written model contracts, drafted in plain language,
enables both landlords and occupiers to discover easily their respective rights
and responsibilities. This will reduce the need to seek legal advice and facilitate
the resolution of problems and disputes. All parties gain from this approach which
leads to significantly reduced compliance costs.
6 Model contracts are considered below in Part 3.
7 For booklets for landlords and tenants renting privately, see the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister website at http://www.odpm.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1151894, and for booklets on
social renting see http://www.odpm.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1152108 (last visited 15 March
2006).
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