Recommendation 3

The Department is not doing enough to support local authorities to regulate effectively. The dozens of legislative powers used by local authorities are complex and spread across multiple enforcement bodies, creating a fragmented and disempowered regulatory system. Local authorities say that they could regulate better with more support and sharing of good practice, but the Department is not sufficiently proactive at providing this. The Department does not have a good enough understanding of what regulatory approaches work at local level to help local authorities ensure that landlords comply with their obligations. The Department also does not know what challenges local authorities are facing, and lacks an early warning system to identify where local regulation is failing private renters. The Department could learn lessons from other areas of consumer protection (such as Trading Standards services), where a national team provides intelligence and support to local regulators. Recommendation: The Department should take a more proactive approach to supporting local regulators and sharing good practice. To do so, it should learn from other consumer protection systems that provide central intelligence and support to local regulators.