Activists in the Generation Rent group are leading a campaign to encourage more private renters to vote in elections.
The campaign if bankrolled by the UK Democracy Fund, which is described as “helping build a healthy democracy – one in which everyone can participate and where political power is shared fairly.”
The fund says it specialises in grants to organisations specifically focusing on young people who are less likely to vote, ethnicities and nationalities least likely to vote; private renters and the vulnerably housed; and those with lower incomes, particularly those without educational qualifications.
Generation Rent claims its own campaigning led to 26,000 extra private tenants voting in last year’s General Election, but is now calling for automatic voter registration (AVR) of private tenants, meaning they would not have to pro-actively register to be entitled to vote.
The activist group says: “It is too easy for renters to fall off the electoral roll and this is too damaging to democracy to rely on organisations like ours to address through digital advertising campaigns. We need an overhaul of the voter registration system.
“The introduction of AVR, supplemented by assisted voter registration, would make a huge difference to registration levels for private renters and make it easier for most of us to stay on the electoral roll when we move home. AVR would see citizens’ voting address updated whenever they changed their address with the local council or another state body, meaning renters would have one fewer thing to worry about when moving home.”
Generation Rent claims that over 90% of private renters are likely to directly or indirectly interact with a local authority already for council tax, or with HMRC for self-assessment tax returns, or the DVLA for driving licences or the DWP for Universal Credit, State Pension or other means-tested benefits.
“A survey of our supporters indicates most people interacting with these state institutions will update their address when they move. A system of AVR would share this data with Electoral Registration Officers and allow the register to be updated with no further action from the citizen” says Generation Rent, which suggests that banks, colleges and universities could also be obligated to share address data with electoral authorities to ensure an even higher proportion of renters are on the electoral register.
And it adds that even with all that data-sharing there would be, in its words, “423,000 private renters who have no interaction with the council or other state body, whether directly or through a household member” would still miss out on automatic registration. To cover this, Generation Rent wants councils to interact with the “new private rented property database, which will help to identify homes where there are likely to be new arrivals.”
This database is, of course, a central part of the Renters Rights Bill, now entering the last phase of its passage through Parliament.
This article is taken from Landlord Today