Evidencing to overcome challenges in private rented housing

Challenge

One in five households in the UK rents their home from a private landlord or letting agent. While most of these tenancies run smoothly, private tenants are more likely to live in poor quality housing, fearing eviction for asking for repairs and with an inexperienced landlord.

Approach

The Westminster government is looking to address many of the problems in the private rented sector through the Renters’ Rights Bill. Verian is running several research and evaluation projects to provide valuable evidence in this area. These include:

• We have developed the monitoring and evaluation plan for the Renters’ Rights Bill once this is enacted.
• Now in its third year, we are running a longitudinal survey of private tenants that started with a random probability, address-based online survey (ABOS). This has been feeding in key evidence to government about feelings among tenants.
• Relationships between tenant and landlord can be strained, sometimes leading to long disputes in the court. Mediation is an alternative to this, though little used in the sector. We carried out research with tenants and landlords to gauge their feelings towards this way to resolve problems.
• The Private Rented Sector Pathfinder programme is supporting councils across England to improve their intelligence on the PRS locally, boost enforcement and educate tenants and landlords. Our two-year mixed method evaluation, finishing in mid-2025, will see how well this programme is working, if measures can work better and whether it offers value for money.
• The Healthy Homes programme is looking to address problems with damp and mould in private rented properties. We are using a randomised control trial, among other approaches, to evaluate the impact of this programme.
• We are also evaluating the Supported Housing Improvement programme, tackling poor support and poor housing standards for vulnerable residents. Much of this counts as private renting, so clear overlaps with these other two evaluations.

Outcome

Together, these studies are helping to build the evidence base around what tenants feel and experience when renting privately and to test different ways to enforce housing standards. Once the Renters’ Rights Bill becomes law, our findings will help support local councils and others to better protect at-risk tenants and improve housing quality.

The PRS now houses 1 in 5 households