Welcome to our first Newsround for 2025, where we are sure that there will be no shortage of landlord news this year.

Let’s see what has hit the headlines this week.

Renters Right Bill

The Renters Rights Bill is due to have its report and third reading next week (14 January) in the House of Commons. It will be debated again, and any amendments discussed. It is not expected to be delayed as Labour are giving this Bill priority.

Once it has passed the third reading and report stage, it will then go on to the House of Lords, going through the same stages there. It is expected to become law sometime in the Spring of this year.

If you are a Landlord Law member, do not miss our next training webinar session on 21 January, where I will be discussing the Renters Rights Bill and what it will  mean for landlords.  Members can sign up via the member dashboard here.  Find out more about membership here.

Draft amendments announced

In advance of the report and third reading stage, some government amendments have been announced (along with a number of MP amendments, which will probably be voted down).  The government amendments include:

• Rent in advance of the start of the tenancy to be limited to one month’s worth.  Asking for or accepting more to be a breach of the Tenant Fees Act
• The student eviction ground to additionally require tenancies to have been agreed not less than six months before the start date
• Limiting guarantor’s liability so they are not liable for rent falling due after the death of the tenant
• Allowing superior landlords to be pursued for rent  repayment orders even if they have received no rent

Concern grows on new redress scheme fees

The NRLA have expressed concern that fees for joining the new landlord redress scheme and database are under-estimated, and they expect the fees to be ‘significantly higher’ than previously indicated.

You can read more here.

Are energy efficient homes less healthy?

Newcastle University, its city council and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine are questioning the health of energy efficiency homes.  They suggest energy efficient measures may mean less fresh air being allowed to come into the house naturally, thus potentially putting people’s health at risk.

They are collecting data which they will analyse from 60 homes which are due to have energy efficient upgrades. Air quality will be measured both inside and out of the home before works commence and then 12 months after the improvements have been carried out.

Professor Jane Entwistle says

Retrofitting older buildings to make them more energy efficient can reduce ventilation which impacts on the amount of fresh air available indoors. We want to find out how making social housing more energy efficient affects both the indoor air quality and the health and wellbeing of those living there.

The study hopes to be able to assess the impact of net zero household energy interventions which will then help them to offer advice to councils and residents.

The results should be interesting.

Landlord awareness to make drinking water safe

Watersafe is campaigning on behalf of tenants by urging landlords to ensure that any plumbing work involving pipework used for drinking water carried out to their properties uses lead-free solder and fittings. Lead can dissolve into drinking water and cause health issues. While using lead is now illegal, some plumbers are  using lead solder.

Watersafe want all plumbers to sign up to their pledge to go lead-free, and they are supported by all UK water companies and drinking water regulators.

You can find your nearest Watersafe approved plumber on their website watersafe.org.uk.

Snippets

Licensing – councils sting landlords for up to £1250 a time
Council U-turns on licensing after damming report
Raynor confirms ambition for rent in advance controls
Industry body urges Welsh government against mandatory E charging points in properties
Controversial Labour council steps up challenges to private rented sector
More landlords risk falling foul of new licensing rules

See also our Quick News Updates on Landlord Law

Newsround will be back again next week

The post Landlord Law Newsround #370 appeared first on The Landlord Law Blog.

There has been a huge amount of information about AI over the past year, and I am bombarded with posts and emails telling me about the advantages of various businesses’ AI services.

I have looked into this, and some of the services I use have AI. But, for the most part, I find the AI contribution unhelpful and often counter productive.

The virtues of AI for writing are normally billed as being able to allow you to produce text quickly.

However, I am a writer. I enjoy writing. I don’t mind spending a bit of time on a post or an article if that is what it takes to make it accurate and readable.

Here are some of the problems I have experienced with AI services.

Inaccurate suggestions

I use Grammarly, which has been very helpful in picking up typos and spelling errors. However, I need to be really careful about following its advice on changing wording.

Frequently, its suggestions change the sense of what I am writing – which can be disastrous if you are writing a legal article! Often, the AI proposed text would make the article legally inaccurate.

Which would not be good for my reputation as a legal writer!

Changing my ‘voice’

When you have been writing for a while, you develop what is known as your ‘voice’ or your individual style of writing.

So, I am not happy with AI suggestions for so called grammatical changes which would change my ‘voice’. After all, who wants all writers to write in the same bland style? Who cares about grammar rules anyway?

Surely, it is more important to make your article readable and convey what you want to convey. Plus I object to having a machine dictate to me what my writing style should be. Shakespeare went his own way, and so will 1!

Helping with customer queries

Another service I use is Intercom, which provides the chat box facility and various other services on my Landlord Law site.

They now have an AI ‘assistant’ which can help you work out how to answer customer queries.

However, in my experience, the suggested responses are invariably wrong. And anyway, I know my business and am better able to draft answers to people than a machine.

We do use the Intercom ‘bot’ facility (which is very useful), but this just sets out pre-drafted answers to common questions. These, though, have all been written by me and do not utilise the AI service.

ChatGPT

After attending a talk on AI last year I signed up to ChatGPT to see whether it could help with my business.

Again, I found it unsatisfactory. Any attempt to use it for legal research resulted in the machine saying either it did not know or coming up with something so basic that it might just as well not have bothered.

I do sometimes use the service for drafting up hashtags for Instagram posts and it is pretty good for helping with recipes. However, I can use the free service for those.  (And I have cookbooks).

So, I have just cancelled my subscription.

Landlord Law and Landlord Law Blog posts are AI free

So when reading something on my websites you can rest assured that I have written them myself, thought about them carefully and used my own phraseology.

It’s possible that if the various AI services improve, I may take a look at them again. But at the moment, I don’t really see the point.

What are other writers’ experiences of AI?

The post Why I do not use AI for legal writing appeared first on The Landlord Law Blog.