Removal of Section 21 Housing Act 1988

I have just written to my MP Stephen Timms, hopefully he will reply regarding his views:

Dear Mr Timms,

Good Afternoon Mr Timms, I hope you are well.
I am highly concerned regarding Government's proposal to abolish Section 21 altogether, this I am sure will lead to even more homelessness, as Private Landlords start experiencing the mayhem it will cause and will pull out of the renting market altogether, our money could be better invested elsewhere, with little risk than in our own country and in helping to provide much needed accomodation to tenants due to shortage of affordable housing. I for one would definitely not take on any new tenants if this Section 21 ultimate safeguard and protection gets abolished.

As a long term landlord, I have never had to take any action against a good law abiding tenant, in fact the longer a tenant stays in a property the better for us, as we don't have to spend weeks on renovating or do any clean up or make over anything to get it ready to put it back on the market apart from general maintenance.

But it is absolutely essential that we have this ultimate tool to evict bad tenants, since using Section 8 requires absolute proof, and when certain incidents happen there is no one taking a video or witnessing the event where landlords can prove to courts that tenant had behaved in a reckless or bad manner endangering not only his own but risk lives of others too, or his or her general behaviour becomes highly intolerable and is disturbing to many others living around him or her, a kind of a mental torture for others, please remember in an HMO, there are other tenants who also need same level of protection from a bad tenant, many suffering tenants will not provide evidence because of fear of repercussions from a bad tenant. This was a case where I had to evict a threatening and violent tenant but I had no evidence to support, and the good tenant left through fear of his life.

I have had a personal experience of a bad tenant who became so abusive and threatening towards another tenant's wife, that the good tenant had to defend his wife and launched a defensive attack, this lead to the bad tenant arranging a few men to come over to sort out the good tenant who only tried to defend his wife being abused and threatened.

So do you think in this case the good tenant should have left if the bad tenant was not being reasonable or getting on with the good rule abiding tenant? Leave for his own safety and struggle to find a suitable accommodation elsewhere? Uprooted through violence! Why should a good tenant be evicted by a bad tenant? or suffer mental torture from a drunken and badly behaving or a nuisance tenant and his intolerable behaviour. Will a court give me a possession of a property if I used Section 8 and said the tenant is being evicted on the grounds of his drunken behaviour, causing mental torture to others?

This intolerable behaviour could also affect good law abiding neighbours, who would be reluctant to provide any evidence or witness statements for fear of reprisals, so how would landlords evict such a tenant if they cannot use a Section 21 notice?

In Newham Selective licensing was introduced in 2012, to combat this very issue, anti-social behaviour, and the tool to fight this is being taken away, does this then mean that Selective licensing should be abolished along with section 21 as well and our fees returned?

The proposed abolishing of Section 21 is not going to punish the culprits but the good law abiding people, the good tenants and good landlords, it is all wrong! (its all wrong! reminds me of Gretha Thunberg ha ha ! )

Abolishing of Section 21 will cause much troubles, many landlords will pull out altogether, including I am also preparing for it too, should this protection gets abolished, I will be defenseless, without a proper material evidence, I will never be able to evict a bad tenant whose behaviour causes mental torture to many,
who continues to pay rent on time, so we cannot evict a bad tenant without a good reason, and evidence, we would be forced to sell, and only those with money would be able to purchase the properties, where would the bad tenants go - not that care less for them, bad tenants don't deserve sympathy and protection from the Housing law, we all live in a civilised society where bad behaviour is not acceptable.

Please kindly think of the repercussions of abolishing this much needed section Section 21, maybe a few rogue landlords might use Section 21 to evict good tenants for No fault of theirs, for fun! Why would any landlord rent out a property to a tenant only to evict a good tenant for fun or for no reason? There is always a reason even when landlords do use section 21 as it gives them virtual guarantee that a tenant cannot defend it by denying wrongdoing in a court and courts relying on solid evidence.

Many landlords don't even know this is coming, as many are not aware and many cannot respond to consultations. It would unfair if only a few thousand landlords put their concern forward, and Government deciding on proceeding with this ill thought plan.

kind regards

Yours sincerely

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 09/10/2019 - 15:27Good email – be interesting if your MP replies – my Labour MP never has, despite meeting him in person and him promising a reply.
That said I don’t think it’s a reason not for us all to contact our MP’s – although I would also suggest copying in the parties I mentioned above comment – 7th Oct.
You mention HMO – again I’ve focused on this in my initial email response to the ministry of housing and others. As noted in my comment above, it’s a flawed consultation.
I was told by the lady at the ministry of housing “the consultation document is geared towards single unit occupancy” and HMO landlords should just use the “other box”
I also asked - can the Q&A support document be updated to encompass shared HMO (licenced in particular), ensuring that this large sector’s feedback can be encouraged to be gathered and also easily analysed on receipt?
Their response “We are exploring updating the document so to explain how the changes will interplay with joint tenancies, to help landlords understand how this will affect them, including landlords of HMOs” -

but no documents have been update! .

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 09/10/2019 - 15:27
Can I redact it a bit and use to write to my own MP?
Thank you.

Please feel free WS, sorry my letters can be quite long! I also copied and pasted Ian Narbeth's points to my MP, those points are real concern.

Instead of chopping and changing so many rules to accomodate removal of Section 21, such as introducing some amendments to existing grounds under the Section 8, of schedule 2 Housing Act 2008, why not simply amend the section 21 whereby it cannot used against any tenants less than 2 years have lapsed since the start of a tenancy, I am sure most of us could put up with this long wait once we know we would be granted a possession under amended Section 21 .
This way no one would be stuck with badly behaving rule flouting tenants who would be very difficult to evict using Section 8, this 2 year minimum term creates a fair balance instead of repealing it altogether.
Many tenants who ignore tenancy rules, and where we know section 8 would simply not stand the ground, we can therefore put up with some nuisance from a tenant for 2 years and know that in two years time we would be able to evict a bad tenant using Section 21 amended . 2 years in my view is a good balance where landlords could put up with a rogue tenant, this would also protect many reasonable behaving tenants whose landlords were not too lenient in evicting them for minor breaches of the tenancy rules. Most landlords do put up with tenants breaching minor issues, so this would be the proper way to shift the balance slightly in favour tenants where some landlords exploit Section 21 at smallest breach.

Section 21 is a strange one. Its one of those cases where I wish that Section 8 worked as it should so that those tenants who are causing a problem can be dealt with quickly.

It would appear that Section 21 got overused as an alternative to Section 8, because Section 21 was a guarantee whereas Section 8 could be argued against on so many factors. I suspect it is this overuse that has now led to the possibility of its removal.

As a tenant, its a strange feeling that at any time I could be asked to leave the place I live through no decision of my own. That I have to put my life into loads of cardboard boxes and go through the hassle of finding another place to live. It worries me as its happened to me once before.

The previous place I lived had a wonderful landlord, elderly woman, kind and charming. A few years into my tenancy she got cancer which progressed quickly and she dies a few months after diagnosis. Her son inherited all her properties, came to see my flat, took one look and said that he could turn our living room into another bedroom and rent it out as an HMO instead making him more money. So he issued me with a Section 21.

I honestly don't know what the solution is about this. I have theorized about possibilities that may make it easier, such as the longer a tenant has been in the property, the longer the Section 21 time must be. Or once you issue a section 21 then the tenant is no longer responsible for rent for the period you request the property back. Both of those would require the government to guarantee that you would get the court order to evict on the 2 month mark without any hassle or delay.

One thing I do know, is that Landlords need to not have a kneejerk reaction to this all happening. If it is seen that Landlords are bypassing legislation or finding loopholes or doing anything that could be construed as punishing towards tenants because of something against their power, that the PRS would just end up even more regulated than ever before. It could lead to any of the political parties ripping your properties away, claiming that you cannot be trusted with them.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 10/10/2019 - 03:54Hi Mike
A few points in reply.
Perhaps the strongest argument for abolishing s21 is that even where tenants have lived in a house for many years, put down roots in the community, made friends and have children in local schools they can be required to leave "for no reason". In most cases there is a reason (and tenants may not be entirely candid, or realistic, when telling their side of the story) such as rent arrears or anti-social behaviour or keeping pets in contravention of the lease or not allowing the landlord access to the property. There are no doubt cases where a few landlords act badly (such as where a tenant reasonably asks for repairs to be done). There is already a law against this but it is not enforced properly. Allowing s21 after two years does not help the long term settled tenant.
As you may know I have some HMOs. We need s21 to remove tenants who upset other housemates and lead to the well-behaved leaving. Two years is far too long to have to wait to get rid of the guy who comes home drunk and careers around the house banging on people's doors or entering their rooms unasked. I can't expect a frightened tenant to give evidence (necessary for a s8 claim) against the man who has the room next door. Even low level obnoxious behaviour is enough to spoil the harmony in a house. Judges won't evict for not doing the washing up or hogging the communal TV!
The crux of the problem is a shortage of affordable houses to rent in places people want to live. Abolishing agents' fees to tenants (which were in many cases excessive) ought to help but the difficulty for tenants is finding a new place to live in the same vicinity at a similar rent. Paradoxically it seems likely that removing s21 will, as my article argues, make the situation even worse by withdrawing some of the housing supply.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 10/10/2019 - 10:16
Interesting: I was chatting to someone a few weeks ago whose daughter lives in a flat and has a young child. The people in the flats on the top floor are drug users who are housed by the council. Apparently her daughter often has to get out of the house with her daughter quickly if the police come in to deal with problems, because if the police get in the place goes into 'lock down' and they then can't get out. They've also come home and found drug users smoking crack in the stairwells.

The council don't want to get rid of the drug users, presumably because if they do, they only have to deal with the problem somewhere else. So the good tenants are affected.

I think this S21 ban doesn't just potentially affect people in HMOs, it also affects people in flats who are intimidated.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 10/10/2019 - 10:16
Completely agree. 👍

S21 is vital for management, providing safe and comfortably environments for decent tenants in HMOs.

Concerned over why the consultation document doesn’t seem to recognise HMO and has been written towards single household rentals.

Ministry of Housing have said that was their main focus. I would agree that a family with kids, schools etc put down more roots and often undertake improvements in a rental property so more invested that a young professional living in a shared HMO.

But very worrying that if the consultation doesn’t recognise HMO as a separate sub sector, they will just roll out scrapping of section 21 with no real consideration how very differently and detrimentally it will effect this sub sector.

Thank you Ian for your views on my suggestion of limiting the use of Section 21 Notice to not less than 2 years before the end of 2 year minimum AST.

In a flat or in HMOs, it is possible to gather solid evidence through use of CCTV recordings, and obnoxious housemate could be brought to justice, evidence can also be collected by calling police and taking or making police crime reports, asking police to issue some kind of evidence that they had to be called to sort out some issues amongst tenants. wearing body cameras where landlord has to visit a premises and gets foul treatment from any obnoxious tenant. Hopefully these can be used against that tenant in a court and granted possession on the grounds of intolerable or unacceptable behaviour within a shared accomodation. Of course you cannot cover CCTV everywhere like in baths and showers or WCs, I have known of obnoxious tenant ripping off toilet seats and blaming on others, breaking shower hoses within a week of a new one being put in, leaving taps running , messing up with toilet cistern, turning up heating or shutting off radiators, cutting off heating to annoy other tenants.

Outside removing other tenants rubbish and dumping it on pavements or in recycle bins, to frame them for the offence of throwing rubbish on pavements.

In as far as a long term tenant who has established his or her rootes deeper in a house and in the local community, I am sure no landlord is going to uproot them for no reason, and if suppose they are uprooted, they can always find another accomodation in the nearby streets, my tenant whom I had to evict after 6 years due to his obnoxious behaviour, he has moved only 3 streets away, still maintaining local contacts, still comes and sees me to sort out things for him, which I have always done as I took him in as a friend for the first two years I did not even charge him any rent, I am sure he must now regret but he just could not overcome his ego, bullying other tenants, dominating them all because he was the longest staying tenant in my HMO and others were petrified of him, at times I felt very threatened by him.

In another real example, i let out a property in 2015 to a family, set the rent at £900 pcm, which was the average going rent for a newly refurbished 3 bed house in Harlow, Essex, today you would think I should be charging him at least £1000. if not the going rate of £1100 for similar size properties in that very area, but hold on, I am getting £800 rent! I still have not used a Section 21 against him, because I know that shortfall is going to cost me much more if he is sent packing using Section 21, since he has 3 young children, a Court would most likely give me a possession on Section 21 but give him more time to leave, and he could then further extend this time by requesting court to delay more due to the welfare of his children, so I could end up losing more as he would stop paying me rent from the moment I give him a notice, that means 4 to 5 months of loss of rent, which can mount to well over £3500 if you also include court fees, then when he has left you will face another huge bill of cleaning up the mess he has left behind, possibly he may even deliberately damage the property and there will be no prospect of getting any of that money back as he would declare broke, that is why I am allowing him to continue to stay at £800 pcm, and just a couple of months ago I replaced old worn out carpets at a cost of £1500 ! And we are called unfair rogue landlords!