Jeremy Corbyn wants to scrap ‘No Fault’ evictions in England and Wales

Jeremy Corbyn told The Independent that in his next Labour manifesto he would pledge to change housing legislation so that tenants could not be asked to leave under ‘no fault evictions’. Click here to read the full article.

Recently Scotland has already abolished fixed term tenancies for private renters giving tenants indefinite tenure.

Corbyn was using DCLG figures to claim the number of households accepted by local authorities as homeless, because they have come to the end of a fixed term AST has risen from 4,580 in 2009-10 to 18,270 in 2016-16.

Corbyn said: “I am very committed to housing and dealing with homelessness. I think it’s a moral litmus test for the country: do we just put up with so many rough sleepers or do we do something about it.

“What we would do is bring in a more regulated private rented system with particular emphasis on longer tenancies. It’s a power relationship that is not remotely fair. Every other country in Europe has some degree of private sector regulation. Most cities in the United States do with the odd one out and this was abolished, basically, by the Thatcher government.

“As you know I’ve spent a lot of my life very concerned about housing and remain so. At the moment we have a largely deregulated private rented sector in Britain and people can be evicted or have their tenancy terminated at the end of six months for no reason whatsoever.

“The stress levels on people concerned is incredible. I get it all the time from constituents, because a third of my constituents are private renters. I am very determined to bring some order and stability to their lives by longer tenancies and eviction that can only be there for good reason rather than just what can be retaliatory eviction.”

This is ignoring the fact that under the Deregulation act there are now rules against retaliatory eviction and that most landlords much prefer good tenants to stay for longer and generally encourage them to do so by only putting rents up if they absolutely have to.

Corbyn went on with a political point saying: “Rights for tenants to remain in a property were reduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1988 Housing Act, which included Section 21, and tipped the power relationship in favour of the landlord. Until this point tenants could remain in their homes as long as they had done nothing wrong, with extra protection for families.”

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