Conservative leader David Cameron has raised the issue of shared housing in Parliament by calling for the Town and Country Planning Order, which would limit access to shared housing, to be revoked.

The government plans have previously been widely criticised by landlords, lettings agents due to the adverse affects they will have on the rental property market in general.

Simon Gordon, Head of Communications at the National Landlords Association (NLA), said: “The NLA is delighted that the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Communities team has listened to landlord bodies like the NLA.

“The Government’s policy on shared housing is both ill conceived and was rushed through without Parliamentary debate. MPs are now waking up to the potentially devastating impact of this policy which will effectively allow local authorities to limit the amount of shared housing.

“Landlords and tenants now need to see their MPs get behind this issue. Let’s not forget this policy would mean a cap on housing not just for students and migrant workers, but for many who do not have the luxury of buying their own home and cannot afford to rent on their own.

“We are glad to see the Leader of the Opposition taking a stand and making housing a central issue in the coming General Election.”

The NLA has responded to the recent publication of the Work and Pensions Select Committee report into Local Housing Allowance (LHA) by calling on Government to rethink its proposals for reform of LHA.

The Committee came out strongly against the Government’s proposal to make direct benefit payments conditional on energy efficiency which it said had the potential to do ‘more harm than good’.

Further recommendations in the report call on local authorities to be more pro-active in identifying vulnerable tenants, and to provide more advice services and support. Underlying this was the Committee’s emphasis that ‘the onus should not be on the claimant to inform the local authority that they are vulnerable’.

Research by the NLA shows that LHA has generated rent arrears across the whole private-rented sector of as much as £220m since it was rolled out nationally, the Committee has recommended that the Government goes further commission an in-depth study on rent arrears ‘to gain a clearer picture of the scale of the problem’.

David Salusbury, Chairman of the NLA, said: “This report highlights the reality that LHA is not working as well as the Government would like to believe. The NLA’s own survey found on average landlords were owe £4,400.

“This is public money that neither the taxpayer nor landlords can afford to lose. “If the sector is unconvinced by the Government’s proposals for reform and the committee’s report is critical, then we think Government needs to look carefully at these findings, deal with rent arrears and try not to make matters worse.”