Vested Interests Strangling UK Property
Wednesday 17th April 2024
Legislation and regulations generated by Govt. are mostly ill-conceived and always appallingly drafted. Civil servants don’t understand when they are having the wool pulled over their eyes by big businesses plus the plethora of quangos and regulators all of whom have a vested interest in creating more laws, bureaucracy and regulations.
New laws are then over-interpreted and rigorously enforced by those who feather their own nests by tying small business in knots, stifling innovation, profitability and growth.
In property, we have seen some pretty catastrophic examples. Here are three:
1. Large property developers managed to persuade Housing and Treasury officials that driving decent private landlords out of the industry was OK because they could generate masses of new ‘Build to Rent’ properties to fill the void. Housing, which they rightly suggested, would reach the standards lobbied for by Shelter, Generation Rent and the like. This puff appealed to the young civil servants in those departments. Sadly, and predictably the number of ‘Build to Rent’ properties coming through the system are negligible compared to the number of private landlords exiting the market.
2. Ironically, one of the reasons for the difficulty generating enough ‘Build to Rent’ supply are the current planning restrictions.
It was the very same big developers who lobbied for the vicious hurdles masquerading as ‘raised standards’ to getting planning which has made it nigh on impossible for small developers to compete thus allowing the firms to slow up supply, sustain high prices and profiteer.
3. I have always worked towards trying to raise standards in the Estate Agency industry. However, in recent years the industry’s own representatives, quangos and regulators have taken it upon themselves to lobby Govt. relentlessly for legislation which suits them and big business. The latest example of this is the Regulation of Property Agents (ROPA) which aims to require agents to be ‘qualified’ - to really quite a high standard - to operate. Over-interpretation and ‘gold-plating’ of the legislation followed by rigorous enforcement and the sale of their training courses and qualifications helps few but the vested interests.
Do email me with your examples of vested interests mal-affecting legislation.
Until next time……
PB
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