MPs To Vote To Let Tenants Sue Negligent Landlords

Private renters living in squalid conditions could get the ability to sue their landlord if MPs approve a private member’s Bill. Westminster North MP Karen Buck will introduce the Bill for its Second Reading in the Commons. If passed, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill would resurrect a law from 1885 which has been rendered obsolete by nearly sixty years of rent inflation. Tenants already have the right to a home that is fit for human habitation, but only if the rent is less than £52 per annum (or £80 in London) – limits last revised in 1957.  Both the Law Commission in 1996 and the Court of Appeal in 1997 called for the archaic rent limits to be scrapped, but successive governments have failed to act. Read more on 24dash.