It has not yet reached its first anniversary of trading, but the Property Redress Scheme (PRS) has revealed that it already has 4,000 member offices.
The PRS is a sister company of commercial insurance firm, Hamilton Fraser. It launched in the summer of 2014 as the newest of three consumer redress schemes for the property industry.
In October 2014, it became compulsory for all letting and property management agents to join a consumer redress scheme.
Before the law was implemented, it was calculated that between 3,000-4,000 letting agents would be required to comply with the new legislation.
The PRS says that its membership level indicates that most of those previously unregistered agents have joined it.
The PRS offers the cheapest scheme, with membership priced from £95 + VAT per office. This option covers the agent for all the property work they undertake, for example, an estate agent that also conducts lettings work only requires one membership.
The PRS also offers two different memberships, one that covers all complaints and another that works on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Head of Redress at the PRS, Sean Hooker, says: “Compulsory property redress for the lettings market is a major step forward in improving service and safety for consumers, so it’s great to see that the majority of agents now appear to be compliant.”1
1 http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/newest-redress-scheme-gets-to-4000-members-in-first-year/