News

Now in its eighth year, safeagent Awareness Week 2019, was about celebration, banging the drum for the good, professional safeagents.

Following NALS’ rebrand to safeagent and the safeagent campaign achieving its original aim of mandatory CMP, this year’s safeagent Awareness Week was about showing consumers how agents raise standards in the private rented sector, and the high level of service provided to both tenants and landlords.

The week kicked off with safeagent’s involvement in high level discussions at Number 10 Downing Street about the issue of ‘No DSS’ advertisements. We explained that safeagent is opposed to both direct and indirect discrimination. Ensuring tenants in receipt of housing or other benefits can access the Private Rented Sector (PRS) is a vital part of making the sector fairer and accessible for all.

Professional Development is a key element of raising standards and providing a professional service to consumers. We highlighted the many training resources available to safeagents. Your professional qualifications are a mark of trust for consumers, and we explained that safeagent Lettings Qualifications are accredited by awarding organisation NCFE as customised qualifications. Successful candidates employed by a safeagent member firm can use our designation ‘safeagent qualified’ – a further badge of professionalism to show consumers.

As part of our mission to support letting agents and ensure a fairer, safer, PRS for all, we highlighted our FREE deposit dispute training for agents. We’ve partnered with The Dispute Service (The DPS) to offer a course which guides letting agents through the key principles of disputes. The course is available for all letting agents, not just safeagents.

As always, we couldn’t do this without you, and you got involved in your droves on social media, spreading the safeagent message. In fact, messages about safeagent Awareness Week 2019 and the hashtag #SAAW19 were seen over 300,000 times! Meanwhile, over 100,000 accounts on twitter were reached. A huge thank you to everyone who got involved.

We’ll be holding a safeagent Super Saturday in the Autumn, so keep your eyes peeled for more information!