Landlords in one part of the UK are bracing themselves for a law change that will significantly affect how they conduct their business.
The Scottish Parliament is studying proposals to introduce a mandatory self financing deposit scheme where private landlords and agents will have to pay rent deposits from their tenants into a named bank account.
The scheme comes on the back of a report that said a large number of private tenants in Scotland find their rental deposit or at least part of it is withheld by the landlord at the end of the lease without good reason. The Scottish Government believe the new scheme would alleviate this problem by putting the deposit account in quarantine until a third party can judge on any dispute between landlord and client in respect to the condition of the property at the end of the lease.
At the moment there is no standard procedure in Scotland to deal with this kind of dispute, and although an aggrieved tenant could take his case to the Sheriffs court, government advisors believe many of the thousands of tenants who have had deposits withheld believe people are intimidated by the system and therefore let rogue landlords get away with their bad practices.
The move was welcomed by the National Union of Students who has many members in private accommodation in Scotland, a large of whom have had deposits withheld in the past. The scheme was slated, however, by the Scottish Association of Landlords whose spokesman said that the scheme would only be subscribed to by good landlords, the type who cared about both their properties and tenants, and the type who had landlord insurance and obeyed all required legislation already.
The final details of the scheme have yet to be finalised but it is anticipated that fines will be levied on non compliance. However, Scottish landlords will look back at the recently introduced Landlord Registration scheme which has failed miserably because of a lack of government action against non compliance in achieving good practice by all landlords.
Tags: Government, Landlord Insurance, Scottish Law, tenancy