What is the Levelling Up Whitepaper?

The Levelling Up Whitepaper is a document that’s been created by the government, detailing their plans to unite the UK and provide “levelling up” opportunities for communities, particularly those that fall below certain living standards. The Whitepaper contains 12 “levelling up missions”, including a shake-up of how the government works, the idea being to give more power to local communities.

What has this got to do with lettings?

With the whitepaper looking to improve the overall quality of life in the UK, it shines a big spotlight on the property industry as a whole, but especially lettings.

The big goal set out by the government in these plans, is to reduce the number of non-decent rental homes by 50%, by 2030. Although some points are explained, while others are vaguer until the release of more specific whitepapers later this spring, here is a list of things the government are planning to look at, as set out in the whitepaper:

• A drive to improve housing quality by creating a decent homes standard for rental properties
• They are going to build more affordable homes, which also includes more social housing, which should hopefully relieve some pressure from the private rented sector (PRS).
• They have committed to exploring the creation of a national register for landlords
• Section 21 will be abolished, while Section 8 will be strengthened to give both tenants and landlords security and reassurance.

If you want to read the whitepaper in more depth, you can visit the government website here.

Although without further clarification we can’t tell exactly how this will affect landlords, it does mean there are going to be big changes you need to be aware of, and it’s a developing story that if you’re a landlord you need to be following.