{"id":578,"date":"2019-03-06T09:50:37","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T09:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/?p=578"},"modified":"2019-03-06T09:50:37","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T09:50:37","slug":"welcome-for-ruling-that-right-to-rent-scheme-is-unlawful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/welcome-for-ruling-that-right-to-rent-scheme-is-unlawful\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome for ruling that Right to Rent Scheme is unlawful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The scheme\u00a0<strong>requires landlords to check the immigration status of tenants.<\/strong>\u00a0Mr Justice Spencer found that the scheme caused racial discrimination and failed to further the desired outcome of encouraging undocumented migrants to leave the country.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/law\/people\/1293\/tegg-graham\">Graham Tegg<\/a>, Director of the University\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/law\/kent-law-clinic\">Kent Law Clinic<\/a>, commented: \u2018Most damming is\u00a0<strong>the judge\u2019s conclusion that discrimination by landlords is taking place because of the scheme.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2018The judge explained that the Right to Rent \u201cdoes not merely provide the occasion or opportunity for private landlords to discriminate\u00a0<strong>but causes them to do so where otherwise they would not\u201d,<\/strong>\u00a0describing discrimination by landlords as being \u201clogical and wholly predicable\u201d in the circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018\u2018The finding of discrimination was inevitable and the judge was robust in holding that the<strong>\u00a0\u201cgovernment cannot wash its hands of responsibility for the discrimination which is taking place by asserting that such discrimination is carried out by landlords acting contrary to the intention of the Scheme\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2018<strong>Immigration status has long been used as a means of excluding people from eligibility to publicly funded provisions such as welfare benefits and social housing.<\/strong>The Right to Rent, first introduced by the 2014 Immigration Act is one of a series of measures that extended the exclusions into civil society, to agreements entered into and between private individuals as private individuals.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It is worth noting that the government\u2019s own research, which emerged during the course of the litigation,\u00a0<strong>confirmed a significant proportion of landlords are unwilling to rent to people without British passports.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Home Office has been granted leave to appeal against the High Court decision. The Right to Rent scheme remains law and landlords are still required to comply with its provisions.<\/p>\n<p>Graham Tegg is the Director of Kent Law Clinic, which is part of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/law\">Kent Law School\u00a0<\/a>and which provides a\u00a0<strong>free public service to people in Kent who need legal advice\/representation and who cannot afford to pay for it.<\/strong>\u00a0He specialises in social security and welfare law, EU free movement law and public law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The scheme\u00a0requires landlords to check the immigration status of tenants.\u00a0Mr Justice Spencer found that the scheme caused racial discrimination and failed to further the desired &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/welcome-for-ruling-that-right-to-rent-scheme-is-unlawful\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38005,"featured_media":580,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17600],"tags":[214367,214377],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions\/579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentlawclinic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}