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Landlords have been accused of “holding parliament hostage” with the threat of selling up to stop tenants’ rights from being strengthened.

A fresh row erupted on the eve of the controversial Renters Reform Bill coming to the House of Lords for its second reading, as one landlord group warned of a supply crisis in the private sector.

Analysis of government data by the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) found that in the last six months of 2023, 45% of people in need of homeless prevention support said the reason was because the property owner planned to sell.

This was more than twice as much as the next most common reason, which was landlords planning to re-let the property.

Separately, data from Rightmove found that 50,000 rental properties are needed to bring the supply of rental homes back to pre-pandemic levels.

The NRLA said landlords need “confidence to stay in the market” and warned peers against attempting to strengthen the reform bill to give renters more rights, after it was watered down by MPs in the Commons.

They said the data comes in the wake of concerns being raised by campaign group Generation Rent, who have warned that landlords selling up is a leading cause of homelessness.

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But Generation Rent accused the NRLA of “cynically” using their concerns “to hold parliament hostage to the idea that they will sell up over even the smallest strengthening of tenants’ rights”.

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One million renters forced to move

Ben Twomey, Chief Executive of Generation Rent, said: “Long term, if landlords sell up it makes little difference to the housing market.

“Bricks and mortar do not sink into the ground, and the home could be bought by another landlord, a first-time buyer or even repurposed for social housing.

“There will always be some landlords wanting to sell, for example because they are retiring or because their mortgages have become too costly.”

‘Relocation relief required for renters’

Mr Twomey said the short-term issue is that “tenants have an appalling lack of protection when landlords choose to sell up”.

He called on ministers to incentivise homes being sold to existing tenants if they can afford to buy, or incentivise selling homes with sitting tenants so they can stay in the property if it changes ownership to a new landlord.

The campaign group also want landlords to be prevented from selling a property for two years after a tenancy has begun, and a relocation relief for renters evicted through no fault of their own so they don’t need to pay for the final two months rent while they look for a new home.

Why are landlords selling up?

The NRLA said there are various reasons for landlords selling up but the key issues are growing costs and uncertainty over the Renters Reform bill.

The legislation, intended to redress the power balance between renters and landlords, has been mired in delay and controversy with the government heavily criticised for diluting some of its flagship proposals, including the ban on no-fault evictions.

First promised by the Tories five years ago, the ban has been delayed indefinitely pending court reforms, in what has widely been seen as a concession to landlords.

Read More:
Almost one million renters given no-fault evictions since Tories promised to scrap them
More than 100 MPs earn over £10,000 a year as landlords

Peers urged to ‘rescue’ reform bill

The Renters Reform Coalition, which includes Generation Rent, has called on peers to “rescue this watered down bill”, saying it is a failure in its current form and “will preserve the central power imbalance at the root of why renting in England is in crisis”.

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The RCC want a package of reforms including the end of no-fault evictions, four months’ notice when they are evicted rather than two and limiting in-tenancy rent increases in line with inflation or wage growth.

As well as insecure tenancies, renters are facing soaring rents and poor conditions amid a wider housing crisis which at its heart is a problem of insufficient supply and spiralling affordability

Ben Beadle, Chief Executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, acknowledged the wider problems and said that “all parties need to accept widespread calls for policies to boost supply in the private rented sector”.

He added: “Landlords selling up is the single biggest challenge renters face. The only answer is to ensure responsible landlords have the confidence to stay in the market and sustain tenancies.

“As peers debate the Renters (Reform) Bill, it is vital that it works for landlords as well as tenants. As it stands it would achieve this balance. We are calling on peers to support the Bill to give the sector certainty about the future.”

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Rats, flies and maggots: The Wigan homeowners plagued by 25,000 tonnes of illegal waste

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Rats, flies and maggots: The Wigan homeowners plagued by 25,000 tonnes of illegal waste

“That smell of maggots, rotting food and maggots, my house smells like that.”

For Louise, not her real name, home has become a hell she cannot escape.

“We just couldn’t move for flies, and then we noticed an increase in rats,” she says.

Louise lives near Bolton House Road in Wigan. At the end of a row of terraced houses sits a former scrapyard, which has been transformed into an industrial-scale illegal dump site.

The wagons started coming last winter, “20, maybe 30 times a day,” Louise remembers.

“Eighteen-tonne wagons. Full of all sorts; nappies, black bin rubbish, chemicals, plastic.”

Within a few weeks, she and her neighbours realised the waste was just being dumped, not sorted or managed. It piled up, higher and higher.

They contacted the council, the Environment Agency and the police – but Louise claims no one did anything to stop the lorries.

Her retired neighbour, Tom, says it felt like the authorities “didn’t want to know”.

Though he does remember someone from the council asking him if he could go and “have a look for them” and “report back” information about what sort of waste was being dumped.

Louise and Tom are both so worried about who could be behind this that they are only comfortable speaking anonymously.

The fire which lasted nine days

By July’s heatwave, the site had long been full. The wagons had stopped months earlier, so 25,000 tonnes of waste, several storeys high, sat festering in the sun.

Lorries and vehicles in the former scrapyard lay buried, unseen, beneath the shredded and rotting filth – and then the fire started.

For nine days, dozens of firefighters from across Greater Manchester fought to bring the fire under control.

Pic: Wigan Council
Image:
Pic: Wigan Council

Pic: Wigan Today
Image:
Pic: Wigan Today

The nearby primary school had to shut due to the acrid smoke.

The sheer amount of water needed by fire engines to tackle the blaze left residents without any – while many were forced to keep their windows and doors shut in the 30C-plus heat.

Some were left with chest infections, others were hospitalised.

“I think it’s awful to let people live with that toxic rubbish right next to our house after us all asking for help and nothing’s materialised,” Louise says.

The crime costing the economy billions

Sky News has been investigating how, across the country, waste crime is a growing scourge and a booming business being exploited by criminal gangs.

Being paid to remove rubbish only to dump it illegally without sorting it or paying tax is an easy way of making huge amounts of money, with poorly enforced legal repercussions and a huge cost to the environment.

It’s something the previous head of the Environment Agency called “the new narcotics”.

– It’s thought a fifth of all waste in England is being illegally managed

– That’s around 34 million tonnes a year, enough to fill about four million skips

– It costs the economy around a billion pounds a year, with legitimate operators thought to be losing a further £3bn from missed business

In July, we tracked down a group of suspected organised fly-tippers who waved wads of cash on TikTok after dumping waste in the countryside.

‘Absolutely soul-destroying’

The residents of Bolton House Road are not the only victims of this toxic dump.

Last winter, Neil Hardwick rented out three diggers to an individual, unaware of the growing illegal dump site in Wigan.

By March of this year, he had not received several rental payments and had received a call from the Environment Agency warning him about what was happening at the site.

Neil and Carla Hardwick
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Neil and Carla Hardwick

With his daughter Carla, he went to Bolton House Road in an attempt to retrieve the machinery, worth approximately £300,000 in total.

At the site, Carla says a group of men slapped her, as well as spat at her. The men allegedly told her father: “We want you to give us £100,000, and we’ll allow you to take your diggers back, or we can cut your throat.”

Carla and Neil say an officer from Greater Manchester Police dismissed their report, and claimed their machinery was not stolen.

That officer also threatened to arrest the pair if they did not leave the area, they say.

“I just wanted us to get those machines back. But the fact that a man can spit in a woman’s face and get away with it, and the police are not interested, well, it is maddening,” Carla said.

The Hardwicks returned to the site 10 days later with officers from the National Crime Agency but found their machines smashed up and destroyed.

Mr Hardwick said the ordeal was “absolutely soul-destroying”.

“It’s caused us so much grief, damage to business, just absolutely brought us to our knees,” he said.

A vehicle used to transport waste to the illegal dump
Image:
A vehicle used to transport waste to the illegal dump

Greater Manchester Police told Sky News there is an ongoing complaint relating to the incident involving Neil and Carla Hardwick at Bolton House Road, and “this process will take time”.

“As part of this complaint, our Professional Standards Directorate are assessing all elements of the investigation including all crimes and reviewing bodyworn footage,” a spokesperson said.

The £4.5m bill

Finding out how the illegal dump in Wigan happened, and who’s responsible, is hugely challenging.

The landowner has not responded to Sky, nor have the companies which allegedly own the lorries seen by residents transporting the waste.

They appear to be either refuse or haulage companies that boast of their environmentally friendly credentials.

The firms seen moving waste to the illegal dump did not reply to Sky News
Image:
The firms seen moving waste to the illegal dump did not reply to Sky News

One company’s website claims it diverts most of its waste away from landfill, and advertises its “innovative approach” to waste management.

“We’re passionate about the environment,” the website says.

Josh Simons, the local Labour MP, has been outraged by the case.

Speaking before his promotion to the Cabinet Office, he said it is “buck-passing” between Wigan Council, the police, and the Environment Agency.

Mr Simons says he was told at the start of the year that there was a criminal investigation, “and therefore no action can be taken to prevent people from dumping more on the site or intervening”.

“That just doesn’t seem right to me,” he says.

He also says information and financial support from the Environment Agency to Wigan Council has been poor.

“The number [the council] have come up with is about £4.5m to clear the waste.

“Anybody who knows local authority budgets at the moment knows they don’t have nearly five million pounds stashed behind the sofa. So what’s supposed to happen?”

The land itself is not worth £4.5m – and Mr Simons thinks this makes working-class areas uniquely vulnerable to this kind of crime.

The funding and powers of the Environment Agency need to change, says Josh Simons MP
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The funding and powers of the Environment Agency need to change, says Josh Simons MP

Paul Barton, director for environment at Wigan Council, said: “Our top priority is to ensure those residents feel heard and safe while the Environment Agency carries out their investigation with our full cooperation.

“We want the site to be cleared as a matter of urgency and are continuing to work with the Environment Agency to survey and sample the waste so polluters/landowners – who are the responsible parties – can progress this as soon as possible.”

Paul Clements, director of operations at the Environment Agency, said: “We are prioritising local people, businesses and the nearby school as we work… to deal with this illegal waste site as quickly as possible.

“Our staff continue to visit the site and at the forefront of our minds is the impact the illegal waste is having on the local community.

“We are continuing to progress our criminal investigation as a priority. This includes actively pursuing many lines of enquiry, interviewing under caution and using the enforcement tools available to us.”

Additional reporting by Adam Parker, OSINT editor, and Niamh Lynch, planning producer

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Urgent action needed to stop fly-tipping by gangs, peers say

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Urgent action needed to stop fly-tipping by gangs, peers say

The Environment Agency (EA), police and other agencies are failing to stop fly-tipping by organised crime groups, a cross-party group of peers has found.

In a damning letter to the government, members of the House of Lords’ Environment and Climate Change Committee called for an independent review of waste crime, with the current approach “inadequate”.

Their report described the EA as “slow to respond to even the most flagrant and serious illegality” – and said its taskforce on waste crime appears “ineffective”.

Police are accused of showing a “lack of interest” in the crime, while penalties for criminals do not match their profits and are “insufficient to deter future offending”.

Read more:
Dirty work: The fly-tippers turning trash into cash

‘The new narcotics’

Sky News has been investigating the boom in waste crime – a trade so lucrative it has been named the “new narcotics”.

Our most recent investigation found that for months the Environment Agency failed to prevent 20 lorries a day dumping industrial levels of waste at the end of a residential street in Wigan.

Over the summer, the 25,000 tonnes of rubbish burnt for nine days – making life hell for residents.

In July, we tracked down a group of suspected organised fly-tippers who waved wads of cash on TikTok after appearing to dump waste in the countryside and in farmers’ fields.

The Lords’ committee has called for the EA’s Joint Unit for Waste Crime to do more to encourage collaboration between various authorities, and for the Department for Environment, Rural and Food Affairs to develop and publish targets for tackling this issue.

Peers have also demanded an end to what they call the “merry-go-round of reporting” where members of the public who report fly-tipping and waste crime in their area get bounced between various agencies.

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Criminals benefitting from trash

This is something Sky News has often heard from victims – they will call the police, only to be told to speak to the council, which then pushes them over to the EA.

Peers want a “single telephone number and web portal” which would triage responsibility for each case.

Read more from Sky News:
Could the UK run out of drinking water?
Mystery of what killed billions of starfish solved

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The boom in waste crime

An EA spokesperson said: “We recognise the recommendations of the report and are committed to doing more.

“Last year alone, our dedicated teams shut down 462 illegal waste sites and prevented nearly 34,000 tonnes of waste being illegally exported – showing that we can make real change despite the challenges involved.”

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King heckled over Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein during visit

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King heckled over Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein during visit

The King has been heckled over his brother Prince Andrew’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a visit to a cathedral.

Charles was shouted at by a man in the crowd outside Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire on Monday, who asked: “How long have you known about Andrew and Epstein?”

The protester, who was filming on a mobile phone, also said: “Have you asked the police to cover up for Andrew? Should MPs be allowed to debate the royals in the House of Commons?”

King Charles during his visit to Lichfield Cathedral. Pic: AP
Image:
King Charles during his visit to Lichfield Cathedral. Pic: AP

The King did not respond to the comments, which came as the monarchy faces increasing pressure to resolve the controversy surrounding Andrew, who earlier this month said he would stop using his Duke of York title and his knighthood after revelations in the posthumous memoir of sex assault accuser Virginia Giuffre.

The prince has always strenuously denied all allegations against him from the late Ms Giuffre.

Reports also emerged that claimed Andrew asked a royal close protection officer to “dig up dirt” on Ms Giuffre. The Metropolitan Police said it is “actively looking into the claims”.

At the moment, Andrew resides at Royal Lodge, a Windsor mansion where he effectively lives rent-free. He’s done so since 2003.

Obstacles to a settlement are reportedly where the prince, who remains eighth in line to the throne, will live and what financial recompense he will receive for the funds he spent renovating the home.

The Sun reported he is keen on Harry and Meghan’s former home Frogmore Cottage.

Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein. Pics: PA/Sipa/Shutterstock
Image:
Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein. Pics: PA/Sipa/Shutterstock

‘The royals need to be challenged’

Calls are still growing for Andrew’s dukedom to be revoked, which can only be done by an act of parliament.

Downing Street has indicated it its reluctance to do so, suggesting the King would not want the issue to take up politicians’ time.

Graham Smith, chief executive of anti-monarchy group Republic, said: “The royals need to be challenged, and if the politicians won’t do the job and the police won’t investigate, then more and more members of the public will be asking tough questions.”

He said he believed Monday’s heckler was “one of our own members but doing their own thing”.

After the visit to the cathedral, the King laid flowers at the UK’s first national memorial commemorating LGBT armed forces.

He was joined by dozens of serving and former members of the armed forces, as he met veterans who told of the trauma inflicted by the military’s former “gay ban”.

The memorial, titled An Opened Letter, was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum.

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