Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2016
The bill requires landlords to provide tenants with certain things. Section 8 imposes an obligation in relation to the written terms of the tenancy, while section 9 imposes a separate obligation in relation to other information that may be specified by regulations. Where those are not supplied, the tenant can apply to the tribunal for a payment order against the landlord.
Amendment 8 provides that, where there are separate failures under sections 8 and 9, the maximum financial penalty available will increase accordingly. That is, the tribunal will now have the ability to award an amount not exceeding three months’ rent for each breach, rather than a maximum of three months’ rent for both breaches. That recognises that the sections impose two distinct obligations and ensures that a landlord who has already breached one of the sections cannot then disregard the other with impunity.
At the same time, amendment 8 avoids the penalty being increased for every individual breach of section 9 that is cited in an application. It recognises that any section 9 failure is, in essence, one of not providing the package of any additional material to which the tenant is entitled under section 9. If that breach consists of a number of different failings, the tribunal can take account of that fact when deciding whether to award the maximum amount for a breach of section 9, rather than a lesser sum.
Amendment 9 prevents a tenant from increasing the amount he or she can be awarded by bringing separate applications for each individual item not provided under section 9. This means that there is no second opportunity to make a claim under section 9 if it could have been included in an earlier section 9 claim. That will ensure that the tribunal’s time and resources are not wasted by having to consider separately later something that it could have taken into account in its consideration of the earlier application.
I move amendment 8.