x
By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies to enhance your experience.
Graham Awards

TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Activists accuse councils of doing nothing to stop retaliatory evictions

Generation Rent activists are back on the warpath, this time accusing councils of not doing enough - and sometimes nothing - to stop so-called retaliatory evictions.

Generation Rent claims it’s used the Freedom of Information Act to discover how many councils have taken enforcement action against so-called rogue landlords. The activists’ claims are made on the first anniversary of the closure of the official government consultation on proposals to abolish Section 21.

The group requested information on 102 local councils’ enforcement of housing standards in 2018-19.

Advertisement

The 81 councils that recorded the data found 11,801 severe (so-called Category 1) hazards and issued 2,898 improvement notices to the offending landlords - this represents 24.6 per cent of the cases. 

If served, these notices give tenants six months’ protection from a Section 21 eviction, under the Deregulation Act 2015. 

In total, the 100 councils that responded recorded 75,099 complaints about conditions in private rented homes.

Generation Rent names six councils which it says failed to issue a single improvement notice, “leaving tenants unprotected from a retaliatory eviction.”

These were Brighton & Hove, Calderdale, Kingston upon Thames, Southend on Sea, Tameside and Wigan. 

Baroness Alicia Kennedy, the director of Generation Rent, says: “With courts reopening there is nothing to stop landlords from evicting tenants who have done nothing wrong. 

“The government knows that Section 21 is a leading cause of homelessness among those who rent from a private landlord yet, despite being promised in the Queen’s Speech, we still have no idea when they will publish the Bill to abolish it.

 

 

“Boris Johnson cannot let another year go by with tenants being bullied into putting up with leaks and mould, or another 30,000 families being made homeless at their landlord’s whim.”

In an attack on government proposals recently outlined to help first time buyers, the Baroness continues: “The answer to the inadequacy of the rental market is not 95 per cent mortgages, but a whole package of measures that make it possible for anyone to make their long term home in it.”

Want to comment on this story? If so...if any post is considered to victimise, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group of individuals on any basis, then the post may be deleted and the individual immediately banned from posting in future.

  • PossessionFriendUK PossessionFriend

    Lets turn this around a little and add some perspective shall we ?
    In 75.4 % of cases where Tenants complained, the Local Authority found No defects.
    79,000 Complaints out of over 4 Million tenancies is Very small - less than 1.9 %
    ( Whereas over 75% are Freeloading whingers. )

    Ginger Rent can expect this figure to rise though, as Taxation, Regulation ( red tape ) much campaigned for by so-called Tenant support groups is forcing Landlords to spend less on improving property for their valued tenants.
    Shame GenRent didn't value the accommodation provided to the vast majority of those they claim to act for.

  • icon

    Absolutely hilarious, Baroness - do keep it up! I didn’t realise comedy was a major constituent of your talent!!

    Landlords ‘evict on a whim’ do they? Nothing to do with aggressive or anti-social tenants, or the plethora of other reasons landlords might need to evict then? But especially funny was your inability to recognise that landlords might be forced into selling whilst asking the govt for a package of measures to keep tenants in their homes long term!! You do realise that landlords may well be happy with that, but the government certainly isn’t - right? You do know that there are no package of measures ever going to be forthcoming because the government's avowed aim is to get landlords out of the market, not keep them in it?! Blaming landlords for government policies over which they quite clearly have no control is ludicrous and ignorant. If you want landlords providing long term homes then campaign against policies that prevent us from doing so!

    icon
    • 12 October 2020 19:19 PM

    What is truly frightening is that idiots like this Baroness have any influence at all.
    A child could do better.

    Very worrying that such ignorance is being espoused.

    Of course as a hard bitten cynic I suspect they know the reality but for political purposes it greatly assists them by lying.

    That is what Lisa Nandy recently stated.

    She suggested that evictions would occur this winter thereby completely exposing her ignorance of where things are currently and of the usually dysfunctional eviction process.

    Though I suspect she knows she is lying.

    Nobody in MSM ever seems to call out these lies.

    But then that is the LL lot.
    Lies are constantly told about the PRS and then inappropriate punitive policies are introduced.

    For me it is all too much and I will be selling up over the next few years.

    No idea where my 16 occupants will go and I don't care.
    Not my problem I'm being forced out of business.

    Of course I might be able to house 4 of them if I am able to buy a 4 bed house.
    But that is looking increasingly unlikely as prices of such properties seem to be rapidly increasing

     
  • icon

    When Ms Kennedy / Generation Rent asked 102 Councils under Freedom of Information Act what enforcement was taken against LL's, how did they forget to ask Freedom of Information Act, how many Tenants breached their Tenancy Agreements so we might have a balanced view.
    Don't know why they bother to mention the 2015 Deregulation Act brought in by Shelter a non-elected organisation that shouldn't be making Laws of the land, just a lobby group with charity status £60m income and no tax & no house, how about them paying 40% tax like us, then giving them £15m from public funds our taxes to wage war against us. Also lumbered us with How to Rent Guide or what ever they call it now as if renters didn't know how to Rent & they doing it since 1988 at least, in the 21 Century above all with their computers / lad-tops & iphones, is it 9 times they have changed the How to Rent Guide impossible to keep up with it, they are just making it up as they go along it shows they no nothing about nothing.

  • icon
    • 12 October 2020 22:00 PM

    According to the Govt and the law ALL tenants are as pure as driven snow.

    It is well known that tenants can do no wrong.

    They are ALL wonderful people.

    It is those evil greedy grasping LL that are the cause of all tenant problems.

    These LL have the nerve to expect that tenants should comply with their contractual obligations.

    Don't these rapacious LL know that tenants are the victims here!?

    It seems that society expects LL to provide free accommodation.
    Is that a fair concept!?

    Surely it is akin to walking out of a supermarket with a trolley load of unpaid items.

    That is theft as far as I am aware.

    It seems that society considers theft of accommodation assets is acceptable.

    We live in peculiar times where theft of assets is prescribed by Govt!!

icon

Please login to comment

MovePal MovePal MovePal
sign up