Welfare Reform and Universal Credit: The impact on the private rented sector

Over the past 2 years there has been significant political attention provided to the private rented sector. The sector is now incredibly important to providing homes for millions of households across the UK. Nevertheless, significant policy and regulative changes have occurred, including taxation reform, energy efficiency measures, increasing regulations, and welfare reform. The recent Housing White Paper has also proposed further changes such as encouraging the 3-year tenancy agreement. The research presented in this report is part of a longitudinal project to examine trends across the sector in relation to policy changes. This report focuses on the impact of welfare policy changes and collected data from a large sample of 2,974 landlords.