Thursday, April 12, 2012
In response to
Empowering and Protecting Consumers, the Government's response
to the consultation on institutional reform, Mark Hayward,
spokesperson for the National Association of Estate Agents and the
Association of Residential Lettings Agents, said:
"We agree that consumer protection is paramount, and nowhere
is it more so than in the housing industry. We therefore believe
more needs to be done to safeguard consumers against rogue estate
and lettings agents. Currently, there is no guarantee that
consumers are getting a good quality of service during the process
of buying, selling, letting or renting a home, as there is no
requirement for estate or lettings agents to be qualified.
"To this end, we would like to see a review of the current
estate agent "negative licensing" system - which means estate
agents do not need a licence. Negative licensing is wholly
insufficient in protecting consumers against bad practice and we
would far rather see formal, statutory regulation of estate agents
- and lettings agents - be introduced. As the NAEA and ARLA, we
have our own agent licensing and regulation schemes, but while
there is no uniform regulation scheme effective across the UK,
rogue agents who operate outside professional bodies like our own,
will continue to take advantage of consumers.
"The most efficient way of implementing this kind of
regulation would be for a single Government agency to be set up to
regulate both the sales and lettings industries. The Government has
a prime opportunity at this juncture to help consumers to be
treated more fairly and we urge it to take action."