Soon private tenants who pay their rental payments on time could see their credit rating boosted in order to make it easier for them to get a foot on the housing ladder. This follows an announcement made that parliament will debate the idea of taking Rent payments into account when people apply for a mortgage.

A  petition started by a Plymouth construction worker Jamie Pogson attracted 147,307 signatures, which is significantly more than the 100,000 needed to force a debate in parliament.

At the moment credit rating agencies do not currently routinely include Rent Payment History when calculating credit scores. What this means for tenants is they can find it much more difficult to access a mortgage, even if they have a long history of rent being paid in full and on time.

A recent survey of almost 3,000 buy-to-let landlords carried out by the Residential Landlords Association (RLA) found that 61% of landlords would support rental payments being added to tenants’ credit histories in the same way mortgage payments already are.

The RLA believes that including rent payments in this way would benefit landlords by making it easier to make a more accurate assessment of a prospective tenant’s credit and rent payment history. The RLA’s chairman, Alan Ward, commented: “With many tenants wanting to buy a house of their own, it is absurd rent payment is not routinely included when undertaking credit checks for mortgage applications.

“Moving to such a scheme would help not just tenants, but also landlords by giving them a clearer sense of whether a prospective tenant has historically paid their rent in full and on time.”

At Discount Landlord we provide a range of Rent & Legal Protection products to help you cover the costs of a defaulting tenant and legal costs of evicting a tenant with prices starting from just £45.00 per annum.