Landlords to be fined for housing illegal immigrants

Earlier today the Queens speech will take place in Parliament, part of this speech will focus on the Immigration Bill which the coalition government hopes will reduce the number of illegal immigrants entering the country, however in true Cameron style he has decided to pass the buck to anyone and everyone following repeated failures of UK Border Control.

Landlords have been targeted once again in the fight against immigration with rulings coming into force today that see landlords being made fully responsible for checking the immigration status of potential tenants, including verifying passports and immigration visas.

The first foreseeable problem here is that most of the 2million buy-to-let landlord in the UK would not know what a forged passport or visa would look like, secondly if copies of these documents are taken by landlords are they then expected to registered under one of the data protection schemes and be legally obliged to keep documents for 6 years.

With the bill threatening hefty fines, running into thousands of pounds for landlord who fail to check immigration status, the big question will be who is to blame if tenants documents turn out to he forged. If a landlord uses an agent to find a tenant will the onus then be on the agent to check immigration status and the landlords responsibility removed.

As always when the governments targets the rental sector not all the boxes are ticked before laws are passed and brought into force, the burning question has to be who and how will this new law be policed, currently there is no national register for landlord nor is there a standalone regulating body for lettings agents, so how will the government be able to check that every rental property only houses a legal occupant.

Currently the government can not even track the number of rogue agents and landlord who are not protecting deposits a law that came into force over 6 years ago and with so many immigrants entering the UK under the radar already, it seems as though Mr Cameron is doing his best to ensure he will not be to blame should this proposed regulation not work as planned, after all how can we blame a government who ensured it would be landlords responsibility to carry out the checks, most landlords are in their early years of retirement and will not be bothered with checking tenants so thoroughly.

What is needed is a national regulation of letting agents and a legal requirement to register every home for rent in the UK only then can the authorities begin to tackle the mountain of issues that trouble the sector of the industry.