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Tuesday 5 November 2013

Immigration Checks for Housing

The way this government blithely sails into entirely predictable disasters has been demonstrated by Iain Duncan Smith and the growing Universal Credit debacle.  Red Brick is giving warning of another crisis coming down the road, the imposition of immigration checks by private landlords. 

The government plans to make all landlords check their tenants' immigration status.  They estimate this would take ten minutes which is a hell of a lot quicker than the Home Office are able to manage.  They also seem to take no account of missing documentation, poor language or "officialdom" skills or simple human impatience.  As Red Brick suggests, many landlords are likely to ignore certain tenants simply to avoid the risks and effort involved. 

We recently had a reminder that racist practices are still commonplace in private lettings, with an example highlighted in Willesden.  Is this bill likely to help that?

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