Islington Council’s month-long consultation on a proposed new Private Rented Sector Charter runs out of Sunday 26 March.

The charter ‘aims to improve property and management standards, give more access and choice for people on lower incomes and raise awareness of landlord, agent and tenant responsibilities’, said the council. 

Its objectives ‘are to improve property and management standards, increase opportunities within the sector for low income households and improve communications across the sector’. 

To this end, the charter calls on the council to ‘work collaboratively across the council and with partners to improve standards’, ‘increase opportunities within the sector for low-income households’ and ‘to narrow the quality gap between the lower end and that of the middle and higher end of the market so that people on lower incomes have greater access and more choice’.

It also includes a commitment to improve communication across the sector, ‘raising awareness of landlord, agent, and tenant responsibilities; sharing good practice and an enhanced role for the relevant professional bodies will help ensure standards continue to be met at all levels of the market’.

And it calls on Islington Council to work within the planning system to ensure all new residential developments deliver the maximum possible amount of social housing, including the maximum amount of genuinely affordable homes at social rents . And it should purchase as many of Islington’s former council homes (on the market) as possible and commit to an ambitious and sustainable programme of council house building.

The charter also calls on the council to work in partnership with private renters and private rented sector landlords across Islington to reduce the incidence of anti-social behaviour.

Finally the charter includes a ‘pledge that there will be no collaboration between their work enforcing housing standards and the Home Office or Border Force’.