Chloe Field:

Yes, I do. I do not know exactly how that kind of speedy enforcement will be put in place, but I definitely think it is necessary. One of the issues we often see is that students feel like they do not know how to hold their landlords to account or complain about them. Especially if they are a first-time renter, they will not have the knowledge or experience to hold their landlord to account or make sure they are complying with the current laws. There is a lack of knowledge there, and the information and the routes are not very accessible. Alongside their studies, students work part-time jobs more and more so they do not have the time to take their landlords to court. There are a lot of those issues.

The short-term nature of a lot of student rentals means that landlords bank on the fact that students often do not complain and tend to suck it up because they know they will leave in May. I had the same issue: I had a lot of mould, and the landlord was not doing anything. I thought, “Well, I’ll go home to my parents’ for a bit to prevent myself from getting ill, and I’m leaving in May, so it’s fine,” but that meant that the landlord could just paint over the mould and sell it to the next person. Accessibility and speed is vital in those cases so that students have an easy route that they can go down quickly to complain about their landlords.