During a session in City Hall, Dr Jennifer Harris of the Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) group, said that reforms in Scotland implemented almost a decade ago had been “severely undermined by lack of awareness”.
In a letter to the Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan, sent on 19 March, committee chair Zoe Garbett noted that even when renters do understand the law, 40% are not confident enough to take action against their landlord, according to recent polling from Generation Rent.
She called on the mayor to commit to raising awareness of the act through his own digital platforms.
During the committee’s call for evidence, the TDS Charitable Foundation highlighted that 90% of London tenants expressed a desire for more information about how the act affects them, which is higher than the national average of 82%.
The letter also outlined demands to make sure such information is timed with the government’s own awareness campaign, set to launch in April, and that it is “accessible, multilingual and designed to engage London’s diverse renter population”.