The Government's Immigration Bill, which is expected to become law in early 2014, will place new obligations on residential landlords backed by stiff fines. The legislation will be relevant to the vast majority of private residential landlords, including landlords with mixed commercial and residential properties.

The government aims to make it harder for people who do not have a right to stay in Britain to rent private accommodation. The Immigration Bill will attempt to do this by requiring landlords to ask for documents proving a potential tenant's right to be in this country before letting a residential property.

What will landlords have to do?

Landlords will have to ask for documents from everyone who will be living in the property as their main home, not just the person named on the lease. Landlords who let property to people without the right to remain, either unwittingly because they haven't performed the checks or knowingly, will face fines. The fines will be £1000 per person in occupation without a right to remain, rising to £3000 per person if the landlord has contravened the legislation already in the past three years.

Where a tenant has a time-limited right to remain in the UK, the landlord will be required to repeat the document check periodically. The frequency of the checks will depend on the conditions of the tenant's right to remain. However, landlords won't have to repeat these checks more than once a year. If a landlord doesn't keep up with the periodic checks, and the tenant's right to remain expires, the landlord will be liable to pay a fine.

Landlords who purchase properties with tenants already in occupation will have to be careful to find out which of their tenants has a time-limited right to remain and ensure that the periodic checks have been performed. This is something that will have to be considered in any property deal where there are sitting residential tenants; if the checks haven't been performed and the tenant's right to remain expires it will be the new landlord that is fined.

What kinds of documents will landlords have to ask for?

Landlords will have to ask for a specified number of documents from a list set out by the Home Secretary, and keep copies of the documents they have been shown. At this stage it looks as though the acceptable documents will vary depending on where the tenant is from. UK citizens will need to show either:

  • a UK passport or naturalisation certificate; or
  • a birth certificate accompanied by a national insurance number or a UK driving licence.

There is a longer list of acceptable documents for non-UK citizens, which includes EEA passports, non-EEA passports with visa stamps, and Biometric Residence Permits.

Landlords will be able to delegate the responsibility for the checks to a letting agent, provided the agent agrees in writing. This is likely to prove a popular choice for landlords that do not deal directly with their tenants.

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