Labour wants all estate agents to have at least one A level and for all agency owners to have completed a degree-level qualifications, it has been revealed.
The new regulations have been added as an amendment to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill currently making its way through Parliament.
And although this amendment is unlikely to become law, it indicates very strongly the way that Labour would regulate the estate agency sector once it is in power – which seems very likely given its current lead in the polls over the Tories.
More controversially Propertymark’s policy chief, Timothy Douglas, told The Telegraph that the rules would ‘apply retroactively’.
New requirements
He says this would mean all current agents could be forced to return to education if they do not already have the minimum level of qualifications and would likely be given a grace period in which to comply with the new entry requirements.
These requirements may sound familiar to agents who followed the rise of then disappearance of Lord Best’s Regulation of Property Agents (RoPA) which caused an uproar in 2019 when it was first published in Parliament.
In October last year Shadow Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook (main picture), who has lodged the latest amendments in Parliament mentioned above, told the Labour conference that he intended to implement RoPA once Labour won power. This would include a statutory code of practice, a fit and proper person test and membership of a professional body should be mandatory.
