Council calls for ban on no-fault evictions amid housing crisis

Old school local authority politics. Make common cause with central government initiatives and add the LA wants into the conversation.

Changing no proven fault to proven fault means opportunities to evade LA housing responsibility due to tenants being intentionally homeless by default.

Of course realistic funding is required to enable housing benefit to be feasible in PRS and HM Treasury know that.

Of course social housing stock is inadequate after 30 years of Right To Buy and no Duty to Build. Many previous Labour governments could have changed that...

I endorse all Paul Bartlett has said above but I must say I find it more than ironic that this Council is pushing for quicker introduction of the 'no fault' evictions ban citing the costs of increased regulation, repairs, the costs of bringing old stock up to new environmental standards and the mismatch between housing benefits and private rents. These, of course, are the very burdens on private landlords which, coupled with interest rate rises, have caused rents to rise and there are yet more such costs in the Renters' Rights Bill coming down the line. Local councils think this should entitle them to more subsidy from central government in stark contrast to private landlords who get clobbered with even more costs, risks and restrictions for which their only available recourse is to raise rents. Far from easing the burden on private landlords, central government are almost certainly about to tax us even more. The effect on rents is as predictable as the increase in the private landlords exodus.

Helping one family remain in their home (by making it more difficult for a landlord to regain possession) simply denies another family, potentially in temporary accommodation, from having the property to live in.

The council should be lobbying to make the PRS more attractive and to control net migration figures. Nothing else will fix the problem.

They won't bring it in quicker as several labour councils are using Section 21 at the moment while they still can!

Why can’t these councillors understand that you cannot compel landlords to remain in the market if they choose not to - and they will choose not to if they don’t consider it an attractive proposition.

And how difficult is it to understand removal of S21 will not make any difference to landlords when there is a S8 ground for wishing to sell, or a landlord operating a policy of not re-letting properties and selling them when tenants move on.

If they’re daft enough to think the few months lull in homelessness which may follow the removal of S21 is worth the longer term worsening of an already bad situation they’d better hope that Angela manages to get the 100,000s of promised social rent homes built PDQ.

2 x S21's being issued today. Benefit tenants who are in rent arrears.
Rent is below market rate.
UC & HB being paid directly to me but tenant failing to pay the top ups, yet these have been deemed entirely affordable.
Info about applying for DHP if they need to have been sent to tenants to encourage them to apply asap. They have not engaged.
Clearly in their best interests to step in and pay this off or they will be having the pleasure of 2 more people added to their temp housing list. (NB Both tenants would be classed as 'priority' need so housing duty will apply and one has further needs that requires ground floor/level accommodation).
Let's see how this pans out.
If it goes to full eviction both flats will be ONLY let going forward to self paying/working tenants with a guarantor.
The 'RRB effect' already in play, before it's even been passed into legislation....I doubt I will be alone.....

Banning Section 21 may enable a miniscule number of people to remain in their current home for a bit longer.
However, it will make it incredibly hard for anyone who isn't gold plated to access the PRS in the first place.

I wouldn't have taken a chance on at least 3 of my current tenants without the existence of Section 21. In all 3 cases things are trundling along in a sustainable way. One is a recovering alcoholic with a history of homelessness. His rent has been one month in arrears for nearly two years due to starting a UC claim after heart problems stopped him working. The other two are both single dads who came via a Local Authority scheme. One had a CCJ. Both work as seasonal workers in a holiday camp so their UC claims are incredibly unstable. They're all decent people who look after their homes but on standard referencing they wouldn't have a hope. With Section 21 people like them are a bit of a risk but without Section 21 they become incredibly high risk. How many PRS landlords will be willing or able to take that risk?

Even graduates who work in decent graduate positions can easily fail referencing due to low credit scores. Not having a credit card or mobile phone contract is all it takes to fail. If they don't pass referencing we can't take out rent guarantee insurance. Currently I'll take the risk on someone in that situation but without Section 21 I probably won't.

I've never evicted anyone in the 25+ years I've been a landlord but it's been nice to know I could if necessary. Somewhere around 25% of my current tenants didn't pass referencing for various reasons. It will be a travesty if decent people can't access the PRS purely because the government don't understand how essential the existence of Section 21 is.

Why do those who have no experience of property management confuse "No fault" with "No Reason" as a manager of Bedsit properties for over 30 years I have only used Section 21 to evict problem tenants and by talking to other landlords I'm guessing that over 90% of section 21 issued, are also to evict problem tenants, so banning section 21 will have a very small reduction in the amount of tenants evicted it will only extend the amount of time it takes to evict a bad tenant, but will have a massive effect on the amount of landlords entering the market and only prospective tenants who are gold plated will be offered accommodation. tenants pressure groups have stated that there is no place in the rental market for private landlords , Their opinion is likely to change when they start falling over all the people living in cardboard boxes.....Colchester Landlord

Reply to the comment left by Catapultman at 20/09/2024 - 12:56
I did an audit of my S21s - I have issued 10 in total my 16 years as a landlord.

NONE were "no fault" (why would I evict for no reason????)

Two were for ASB and those tenants would still be in my property terrorising the neighbours if it were not for S21.
Under the RRB, evicting for ASB using S8 will be next to impossible,

What don't he get, banning something that is one of the reasons why we give the house in the first place. Stop that, u have no homes next year.