Charity’s attempt to stop the Renters Rights Bill causing a pets in lets crisis

Long Eaton based pets charity AdvoCATS is relaunching its Heads for Tails! campaign to make renting a home with pets easier and fairer for both tenants and landlords on Monday 11th August, exactly 28 days until the Renters Rights Bill returns for the consultation process between the House of Commons and the House of Lords on 8th September.

Jen Berezai, founder of AdvoCATS, said: “That’s 28 days of building on our already impressive support base and delivering a message to the Government stressing that the House of Lords got it badly wrong when they voted against a landlord’s right to require pet damage insurance and then voted for a separate pet deposit of three weeks’ worth of rent, just before parliament broke up for the summer recess”.

“We intend to submit an open letter to the Secretary of State for Housing Angela Rayner and the Minister of State for Housing Matthew Pennycook on 1st September” added Berezai. “The letter will be signed by all of our supporters from both the Private Rental Sector (PRS) and the animal welfare world. It will accompany a briefing paper explaining why pet damage insurance is the common-sense solution to the lack of pet friendly rentals, and is the favoured option of both tenants and landlords.”

The House of Lords gave two reasons for voting off the pet damage insurance provision for landlords, citing the likely cost of such insurance, “potentially £150 a year” and the readiness of the insurance industry for “enquiries at scale.”

"Both these reasons are completely at odds with reality” Jen claimed. “Let’s take cost first. Currently, many landlords who will allow pets charge a monthly pet rent on top of the normal rent payment. The average is £25 per pet per month, although we have seen as much as £50 per pet charged. That’s £300 per pet per year, whereas an insurance policy would cover an address, ie more than one pet. Insurance would also come with the potential for a no-claims history, invaluable when moving to a new property, not to mention several thousand pounds of cover from day one for the landlord. You do the maths!”

Turning to the readiness of the insurance industry, the pets activist claims that the politicians didn’t actually consult the insurance specialists within the PRS, a fact she says was widely acknowledged by the property press and commentators on LinkedIn. “The industry is ready – very ready. We know of several providers, many of whom having been working on new products ever since pet damage insurance was included on the original Renters Reform white paper published in 2022. Others would have followed during the bill’s implementation period.”

In a twist Jen described as "confusing", the second amendment voted on by Peers, the introduction of a separate pet deposit of three weeks worth of rent, was summed up as seemingly "...completely at odds with any budgetary concerns raised. The average weekly rent in England is £270, meaning tenants would have to find an additional £810 up front. When added to the standard deposit of 5 weeks worth of rent, that’s over two thousand pounds required.

“It’s geographically disproportionate,” Jen argued. “Why should having a pet mean a higher deposit if you live in say Berkshire than it would if you lived in the East Midlands where we operate? It’s totally nonsensical. Rent itself is subject to market forces, a pet deposit shouldn’t be.  

“Landlords already have on average over 10 applications per property to consider” concludes Berezai. “They’re far more likely to choose the perceived ‘easy option’ ie applicants without pets, if they can’t mitigate the potential financial risk of pet damage. Less than 7% of properties advertised for rent are detailed as pet friendly, and this is a growing problem, when you consider pet policies affect 76% of tenants: those who have pets and those who’d like to have a pet.

“Over three-quarters of landlords saw insurance as the simplest way to get more of them to be pet friendly; denying them the legal authority to require pet damage insurance will negatively impact both tenants and animal rescues, as pet owning tenants are forced to make an impossible decision between keeping their pet(s) or having a roof over their head.”

AdvoCATS’ Heads for Tails! campaign, calling for landlords to be able to require pet damage insurance, was launched in 2021 and was endorsed by over 80 MPs, Peers, Private Rental Sector companies and animal welfare organisations. It was first included in the then Conservative government’s Renters Reform Bill, and survived the 2024 general election, when it made it onto Labour’s near identical Renters Rights Bill.