• AS somebody who has rented in the borough for 17 years, I would like to congratulate Camden Council on the successful legal action they have recently taken against four branches of Foxtons for failing to explain what exactly their “administration fees” covered.

For too long now, the Camden Federation of Private Tenants, the organisation for renters that I am a member of, has been hearing stories on a daily basis about the rip-off fees that letting agents have been charging and, like Foxtons, failing to explain what exactly they are for.

If Foxtons do indeed “employ an open and transparent approach when it comes to fees”, as they claim, then maybe they can explain why they have just been fined £18,000 by the local authority?

As if renting in Camden wasn’t expensive enough, the fees levied by agents merely add to the financial pressure now being felt by renters, especially if they have to keep moving every six to 12 months, as is now the norm in the private rented sector.

However it hasn’t always been like this. All the government’s proposal to ban letting agent fees does is take us back to a time when it was just the landlords who were charged fees. After all it is they and not the tenants who they are working on behalf of, so it makes perfect sense that they should be the only ones paying.

Also if letting agents need to save money in anticipation of the forthcoming ban, I would like to suggest that they could dispense with the expensive offices, the sharp suits and the top-of-the-range cars they drive around in. In fact I remember when Foxtons moved to their plush offices at the top of Parkway – no expense spared.

NICOLA DEXTER
Camden Federation of Private Tenants