Changes at Tenancy Services for landlords

The department says the changes have been prompted by an evolving rental market. It says an increasing number of people are renting properties and a high proportion of landlords have just two or three properties.

"The aim is to improve access to our services, connect more to communities improve the quality of services with new technologies allowing faster and more consistent advice and prevention," the department says.

As part of the improvements Tenancy Services will start offering telephone mediation.

This will only be available for simple disputes where both parties agree to telephone mediation. Also the tenant has to know about the complaint (Tenancy Services says many landlords don't tell tenants they are going to seek orders) and phone numbers have to be supplied.

It says telephone mediation is not a service that can be requested. It will decide what complaints use the service.

In its Auckland trial the department found that 20% of disputes could be quickly resolved using telephone mediation.

A new Tenancy Tribunal Form was rolled out on June 19 with full implementation of the changes by mid-July. These will be new-look forms with boxes to tick and clear type layout.

All tenancy tribunal applications now have to be sent to Wellington for processing. The department says it can no longer accept the old forms.

The department expects Tenancy Tribunal decisions will be available online later this year.

The database will be made up of current and future decisions rather than past decisions.

This has been done as there are issues with the consistency and format of names on historical decisions. Tenancy Services advises that it is important to have a tenant's full name on any Tenancy Agreement and landlords should get an ID photo too.

Mediation decisions will not be available online as these have been conducted in privacy.

The database will be updated daily and department expects about 20,000 orders to be lodged on the site each year.