We asked, you said, we did

We asked

We have developed a new Private Tenants’ Charter that focuses on setting out the standards and legal obligations that landlords and agents must follow in order to protect the rights of private tenants. We asked for your views on what the charter should look like, how we can raise awareness of tenants’ rights, and whether these rights are being upheld across the borough. We wanted to make sure that the information was clear and would help inform tenants of their rights.

You said

Overall, the feedback to the charter was positive. You liked that we split the charter into four sections as you felt this made it easier to understand. You also agreed with the inclusion of the principles in the charter. And finally, the majority of you said that after reading the charter you felt more informed about your rights as a tenant.

However, you did have some suggestions on how we could improve the charter. The key points of feedback were:

We did

We reviewed the document and clarified points which respondents flagged as unclear. We also included links to additional information in sections where we felt this could be beneficial. We want this document to be an easily accessible and short explanation of tenants’ rights, so we don’t want to overload it with information. However, we hope these links to further information can help those who want to know more. We have gone through the document and signposted these links to make this clearer.

In response to your feedback, we have added a section of tenants’ responsibilities. While this document is primarily intended to address tenants’ rights, we hear your feedback that it can come across as a little one-sided. Therefore, we have added some information on tenants’ responsibilities and linked to an external webpage where you can find out more.

In response to your questions about our role as a council, we have made the section on how to report an issue and what we will do in response more explicit. There is also new renters’ rights legislation due to come in later this year which will give us greater power to protect and enforce the rights of private tenants. We will update the Private Tenants Charter once this legislation has passed.

Finally, when we launch the charter, we will work with our web design team to make sure that all the information included can be easily found when searched for.