Private landlord checks condemned as “recipe for discrimination”

Critics have taken aim at a proposal to require private landlords to check their tenants’ immigration status—included in the legislative programme outlined in the Queen’s Speech. 

An Immigration Bill would introduce fines for landlords who fail to carry out the checks, and restrict the right of appeal against deportation to the most serious cases. 

However, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants branded the proposals for private landlord checks “a recipe for discrimination” which would increase bureaucracy, raise the cost of rent as landlords turned to agents for help, and ask landlords to make judgments that “even UK Border Agency staff and police officers have got wrong repeatedly”.

The proposals could encourage landlords to discriminate against people with foreign-sounding names or place tenants at the mercy of rogue landlords, the charity warned.