The ramifications of the Immigration problem that faces the UK are horrendous and it’s probably the main plank that supports the ethos of UKIP. We all know what percentage of the vote that this party managed to muster at the recent council elections and by-election and the Tory’s are quite rightly worried about the surge of support for this group who hitherto was known as a debating society.
Gordon Brown and his incompetent team have even conceded themselves that their immigration policy for the UK was woefully inadequate. With Europe expanding at an expediential rate ‘hoovering’ up all the former Soviet satellite like Romania and Bulgaria etc., this is all fine and dandy but with a borderless frontier between European states the more desirable countries, such as Britain, act as magnets for refugees. Our lackadaisical, libertarian border controls (if you can call them that) were as waterproof as a standard kitchen sieve.
Now that the problem is over-running the Border Agency look at the brainwave that they have suddenly cooked up, ‘task’ the letting agents with a job of checking the immigration of the tenants and landlords and fine the landlords if they get it wrong!
Who pays the letting agents for this job? This on top of all the other regulation disciplines and protocols they need to observe such as health and safety, landlord and tenant, Estate Agents Act, data protection, money laundering, environmental audits and more. Effectively the letting agent is becoming an unpaid servant (or should I say lackey?) of the State.
With all these regulations conspiring together arranging a deal is so complicated and labyrinthine that the time taken to satisfy compliance will undermine the transaction itself.
We all know that the Labour Party tie themselves up in bureaucratic knots but I thought that The Coalition would not suffer from the same archaic vestiges.
For ‘Pete’s sake’ give the letting agents a break and allow them to make some money in this difficult market without the hindrance of further regulation.
Making letting agents be unpaid immigration officers is daft. Give them a break, let them earn a crust – it’s difficult enough.