The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) department is considering introducing legislation to outlaw ‘retaliatory eviction’ – a phrase coined by tenants’ rights groups and used where tenants’ complaints to landlords result in eviction via a section 21 notice.
Jonathan Bramhall, from the CLG’s private sector property division, discussed the issue at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health conference last week.
Bramhall said the DCLG received more than a thousand reports of retaliatory evictions a year and had also received evidence of the practice from the Citizens Advice Bureau.
He told the conference that, following a consultation on the private rented sector concluded in March, the Government would announce any new laws it wished to introduce by the summer. He said it was committed to cracking down on rogue landlords and improving conditions for tenants.
Bramhall speculated that one way to protect tenants would be to block landlords from evicting using Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988, if the property contained health-threatening hazards. This approach is used in Australia, New Zealand and some parts of the US.
He added it could also be possible to extend rent recovery orders to landlords who had illegally evicted tenants or let hazardous properties.
Restricting landlords’ rights to use section 21 to evict tenants would undoubtedly result in a backlash from landlords. Let us know your thoughts.
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Comments
How on earth do they think they will police this new hairbrained scheme?
Are we going to have streams of court cases where the tenant has to prove that they have been served S.21 because of a particular situation. Any landlord must have a mechanism for getting there own property back.
Any more of this nonsense and we will have no PRS left.
All this action to make landlords compliant, we never hear about tenants trying to stick to the contract. This is so one sided, I am surprised there are any landlords left.
How about having a tenant training and accreditation certificate relating to the contract.
Here in central Southend SEAL is doing a survey. Last evening a tenant responding to the questionnaire said 'my landlord is great, responds quickly, we work as a team looking after the property'. That is the direction we should be going in. The contract is good and flexible, stop interfering with it, educate both sides to stick to it. The landlord has to have control of his property or he will not be able to continue long term. There are mostly multiple reasons for eviction, usually that the tenant is very difficult in some way, non payment, not allowing access, not caring for the property. Why should a troublesome tenant be allowed to stay and stop the work being done, thus preventing a more reasonable tenant from being housed.
So if a property contains 'health-threatening hazards' the tenants can't be moved out - the government forces them to stay.
We have tenants that specifically don't want improvement works done as they fear that the landlord will then put the rent up - which they wont be able to afford.
presumably this legislation would require amendment to the Housing Act ? in which case how about sorting out the complete madness of deposit protection and re-serving prescribed information ??