As we all now know, the Government has acknowledged that the ban on Section 21...
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Landlord Action supremo Paul Shamplina has given Landlord Today readers a unique insight into the complexity of court reform before the abolition of Section 21.
Housing Secretary Michael Gove has pledged that on the one hand the Renters Reform Bill will go ahead and become law by the next General Election - which just be held at the Kate’s in January 2025.
On the other hand he’s pledged that getting rid of S21 - the centrepiece of the Bill - wont happen until court reforms which allow landlords to use more effectively alternative possession powers.
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So how to square the circle?
In a video interview Shamplina explains the long list of complicated and time consuming changes required to reform the courts.
The interviewer is Angels Media sales director Lee Dahill.
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So all this Hoo-ha is down to the Councils interference forcing Landlords to go to crooked Court’s that will use any nonsense excuse to throw out landlords request. There will be some piece of irrelevant paper you didn’t get right unless you used Paul.
There shouldn’t be any requirement for a Court case in the first place, just all parties abide by their Contracts.
Scrap The Renter’s Reform Bill now it getting out of hand, stop your nonsense creating Homelessness no benefit to Tenants or Landlords just mischief by The Department of Levelling nothing.
100% Michael. That's exactly how it is in Scotland. I'm on my 3rd attempt to serve notice on tenants occupying a house I want to sell.. Then I'll have to apply to the first tier tribunal in Glasgow who will go to great lengths to reject your application based on some small technicality.
I've been trying almost a year now and house prices were good when I first applied... Who knows what the market will be like when and if I ever get my property back....it's a disgrace how landlords are treated considering they're shoring up an ever crumbling housing shortage.
Paul Shamplina may be an expert on the court situation and the number of Section 21 notices being issued at the moment, but he doesn't have any power.
Angela Rayner will probably be in charge next year with a huge amount of power. She has acknowledged that the court system needs to be sorted out, but despite that acknowledgement has said that Section 21 will be abolished straight away. Therefore what governments should do before Section 21 is abolished is totally irrelevant.
I agree with Michael, that both parties should simply abide by the contract which they have signed - and the parties to the agreement should be absolutely sure at the outset that they agree with all the terms. If governments and local authorities kept out of the landlord and tenant relationship - and the housing acts were repealed - then supply would increase, rents would fall, property standards would improve and people on benefits and with families and pets etc could get accommodation.
Housing is tricky for both political parties. Reduce the landlord's income by taxation and they will sell up. Impose 170 regulations onto Landlords and they will sell up. Slow down Court procedures and Bailiff evictions and Landlords will sell up. In short, dramatically decrease income on any investment and the investor will sell up and find a better income elsewhere. This is now happening. Let's not pretend it is not. Hundreds of thousands of landlords are leaving the sector.
Despite the political anti-landlord sentiment, both labour and conservatives need MORE rental homes. If they are unwilling to build MORE then an ever-increasing number of Councils will issue Section 114 bankruptcy notices... and more Landlords will sell up.
To think that Landlords and Councils will just carry on making losses but somehow continue housing millions of poverty-ridden families just because the government introduced the Renters Reform Bill is simply not going to happen.
The problem stemmed from the government's overtly hostile rhetoric toward Landlords and not getting them together with Charities, Councils and Government officials into a calm, sensible debate.
So what has happened, as expected, is all the stakeholders are drawing their own red lines. And of course, the most crucial stakeholders are Landlords, as without them everything is a non-starter and rebounds firmly back into the government's court that in turn bankrupts scores of Councils as their budgets are taken up with their top-heavy obligations to provide housing.
All true, Robin, but the Tories involved in creating the Renters Reform legislation knew the consequences you describe. They had all the historical data at their fingertips. They wanted to push young, employed renters into owner occupation by reducing supply and use all the remaining properties that weren't sold by landlords for those who would never be able to buy. Remaining landlords were to be compelled to house them permanently to the same standard as required by local authorites - and sooner or later rent controls would come, too, so that local housing allowance would cover the rents.
They didn't want to create a good, well functioning private rental sector - that was not the aim. How could they discuss their aims with private landlords!
Ellie, I think that you are crediting politicians with too much intelligence and foresight. Don't forget they're driven by ideology, soundbites and short termism. The housing sector has always been the poor cousin to other political sectors - witness 15 housing ministers in 13 years! They should hang their heads in shame at that fact alone.
As Robin correctly identifies, a calm sensible debate was what was needed, rather than the decade long war that we've experienced
Perhaps, Doug. I do think that some politicians have inadvertently bought into the phoney narrative that landlords serve a Section 21 notice because they don't want to respond to requests by tenants to carry out repairs.
It is pretty obvious though that abolishing Section 21 and driving landlords out will increase homelessness, not reduce it.
Unfortunately Ellie, i am sure Landlords will have used section 21 in that way.
In this country we have 'Yes people' as politicians and they simply respond to the loudest voice and then try and get the narrative to fit. This particularly works against Landlords due to envy from a lot of people and the fact that tenants feel that they are buying the house for the Landlord with their rent!
Robin is indeed correct about a calm narrative and all views are taken into consideration.
Osbourne is an excuse for a Politician whom started the biggest issue of bringing in Section 24.
I know this particular legislation does not affect you, however if you were 30 years younger you could have been tempted to have more houses with small mortgages, but section 24 will have caught you out as it has many others now that interest rates rose so quickly. Of course I could be totally wrong with my assumption but my point is we need more Landlord's and more rental properties. For whatever reason the muppets making the decisions just are blind to this.
Housing needs a growth of Landlord's and that is simply not happening.
I cannot see anything changing and as a consequence I will be selling most of my portfolio, I hope to manage this with tenants leaving on their own accord. This will depend on how, whichever Government, gets into power decides to play out the housing crisis.
I don't think you are alone in what you are doing, Andy, both because of the unfairness of Section 24 and the loss of Section 21.
Many landlords will be hoping that tenants will leave of their own accord because they don't want to ask them to go before Labour, very probably, takes power next year.
On the subject of repairs, I can't see the benefit to landlords of telling tenants to leave if they are required. The repairs would need to be done if the tenants left in order to be able to relet the flat. It saves a great deal of money for landlords if repairs can be conducted while the flat continues to be let. The majority of repairs can be carried out in a few hours while tenants are living in a property.
Of course, in certain circumstances it would be difficult to carry out repairs when tenants are still there. It depends on what the repairs are and the extent of the damage. If there were extensive damage then a Section 21 notice would be useless. If a ceiling had come down for example, how could you wait more than two months to deal with that? You would need to use your insurance policy to rehouse the tenants on a temporary basis.
There could be circumstances, I suppose, where tenants were requesting work/upgrades which the landlord was not required to carry out, but that would surely be handled by explaining what is required by law and what is not.
Ellie, there is so called maintenance or minor repairs, damage is usually much more and caused by the Tenants much harder to fix than it was to do the first day.
I know this from the time I spent fixing damaged fire doors, Frames and broken locks with their cursed Euro cylinders with thumb screw inside to prevent anyone getting locked inside in case of fire. Tenants changed the locks but Tenants leave without giving you the key so your own spare key no
good, worse if room is left locked. The unbelievable damage they done changing the lock they didn’t know about the concealed screw behind the face plate. Anyway the locks they installed don’t have a thumb screw and you have no keys so almost possible to get cylinder out as the mechanism has to be lined up but as well the manufacturers are so stupid they are now making them anti- drill anti snap, who is going to be drilling them only the owners, burglars are not messing around like that just burst. Licensing Scheme’s is a good reason to want older properties vacant you try replacing doors and frames, drilling , planning and banging. Council’s looking for extra washing & cooking facilities. I had to put in additional cooker, sink, toilet and hand basin, lift flooring to run wires for Emergency lighting and Fire Alarm systems. Ok every room full of their belongings, not room to move sometimes people working from home or worse still on Benefit stuck in your way all day. I would love to see those Regulation’s do it so full of bull. Landlords are now everyone mug, whether its Rent 2 Rent making double off Lld’s backs, lease purchase options or Corporate new Big Boys given unfair advantage and haven’t they grabbed 10% of the Market in jig time and don’t need a license if more units than three in a Block yes They could make it up.
That is an excellent post, Michael, about the problems landlords face with repairs.
Damage is frequently caused by tenants - and sometimes difficult to fix. A while back I had young men who broke everything through both negligence and messing around e.g. pulling handles off doors. I did fix everything myself as breakages occurred and didn't charge them anything - and they took that for granted, too. I can just hear them now "Cinderellie come and fix this door!"
Tenants' careless misuse of bathrooms can be a problem as well.
You are right about licensing requirements- can be unreasonable - very heavy burdens placed on landlords.
And very, very difficult to carry out repairs when tenants block access with their belongings etc.
I have encountered all the difficulties that you have.
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So all this Hoo-ha is down to the Councils interference forcing Landlords to go to crooked Court’s that will use any nonsense excuse to throw out landlords request. There will be some piece of irrelevant paper you didn’t get right unless you used Paul.
There shouldn’t be any requirement for a Court case in the first place, just all parties abide by their Contracts.
Scrap The Renter’s Reform Bill now it getting out of hand, stop your nonsense creating Homelessness no benefit to Tenants or Landlords just mischief by The Department of Levelling nothing.
100% Michael. That's exactly how it is in Scotland. I'm on my 3rd attempt to serve notice on tenants occupying a house I want to sell.. Then I'll have to apply to the first tier tribunal in Glasgow who will go to great lengths to reject your application based on some small technicality.
I've been trying almost a year now and house prices were good when I first applied... Who knows what the market will be like when and if I ever get my property back....it's a disgrace how landlords are treated considering they're shoring up an ever crumbling housing shortage.
Paul Shamplina may be an expert on the court situation and the number of Section 21 notices being issued at the moment, but he doesn't have any power.
Angela Rayner will probably be in charge next year with a huge amount of power. She has acknowledged that the court system needs to be sorted out, but despite that acknowledgement has said that Section 21 will be abolished straight away. Therefore what governments should do before Section 21 is abolished is totally irrelevant.
I agree with Michael, that both parties should simply abide by the contract which they have signed - and the parties to the agreement should be absolutely sure at the outset that they agree with all the terms. If governments and local authorities kept out of the landlord and tenant relationship - and the housing acts were repealed - then supply would increase, rents would fall, property standards would improve and people on benefits and with families and pets etc could get accommodation.
Housing is tricky for both political parties. Reduce the landlord's income by taxation and they will sell up. Impose 170 regulations onto Landlords and they will sell up. Slow down Court procedures and Bailiff evictions and Landlords will sell up. In short, dramatically decrease income on any investment and the investor will sell up and find a better income elsewhere. This is now happening. Let's not pretend it is not. Hundreds of thousands of landlords are leaving the sector.
Despite the political anti-landlord sentiment, both labour and conservatives need MORE rental homes. If they are unwilling to build MORE then an ever-increasing number of Councils will issue Section 114 bankruptcy notices... and more Landlords will sell up.
To think that Landlords and Councils will just carry on making losses but somehow continue housing millions of poverty-ridden families just because the government introduced the Renters Reform Bill is simply not going to happen.
The problem stemmed from the government's overtly hostile rhetoric toward Landlords and not getting them together with Charities, Councils and Government officials into a calm, sensible debate.
So what has happened, as expected, is all the stakeholders are drawing their own red lines. And of course, the most crucial stakeholders are Landlords, as without them everything is a non-starter and rebounds firmly back into the government's court that in turn bankrupts scores of Councils as their budgets are taken up with their top-heavy obligations to provide housing.
All true, Robin, but the Tories involved in creating the Renters Reform legislation knew the consequences you describe. They had all the historical data at their fingertips. They wanted to push young, employed renters into owner occupation by reducing supply and use all the remaining properties that weren't sold by landlords for those who would never be able to buy. Remaining landlords were to be compelled to house them permanently to the same standard as required by local authorites - and sooner or later rent controls would come, too, so that local housing allowance would cover the rents.
They didn't want to create a good, well functioning private rental sector - that was not the aim. How could they discuss their aims with private landlords!
Ellie, I think that you are crediting politicians with too much intelligence and foresight. Don't forget they're driven by ideology, soundbites and short termism. The housing sector has always been the poor cousin to other political sectors - witness 15 housing ministers in 13 years! They should hang their heads in shame at that fact alone.
As Robin correctly identifies, a calm sensible debate was what was needed, rather than the decade long war that we've experienced
Perhaps, Doug. I do think that some politicians have inadvertently bought into the phoney narrative that landlords serve a Section 21 notice because they don't want to respond to requests by tenants to carry out repairs.
It is pretty obvious though that abolishing Section 21 and driving landlords out will increase homelessness, not reduce it.
Unfortunately Ellie, i am sure Landlords will have used section 21 in that way.
In this country we have 'Yes people' as politicians and they simply respond to the loudest voice and then try and get the narrative to fit. This particularly works against Landlords due to envy from a lot of people and the fact that tenants feel that they are buying the house for the Landlord with their rent!
Robin is indeed correct about a calm narrative and all views are taken into consideration.
Osbourne is an excuse for a Politician whom started the biggest issue of bringing in Section 24.
I know this particular legislation does not affect you, however if you were 30 years younger you could have been tempted to have more houses with small mortgages, but section 24 will have caught you out as it has many others now that interest rates rose so quickly. Of course I could be totally wrong with my assumption but my point is we need more Landlord's and more rental properties. For whatever reason the muppets making the decisions just are blind to this.
Housing needs a growth of Landlord's and that is simply not happening.
I cannot see anything changing and as a consequence I will be selling most of my portfolio, I hope to manage this with tenants leaving on their own accord. This will depend on how, whichever Government, gets into power decides to play out the housing crisis.
I don't think you are alone in what you are doing, Andy, both because of the unfairness of Section 24 and the loss of Section 21.
Many landlords will be hoping that tenants will leave of their own accord because they don't want to ask them to go before Labour, very probably, takes power next year.
On the subject of repairs, I can't see the benefit to landlords of telling tenants to leave if they are required. The repairs would need to be done if the tenants left in order to be able to relet the flat. It saves a great deal of money for landlords if repairs can be conducted while the flat continues to be let. The majority of repairs can be carried out in a few hours while tenants are living in a property.
Of course, in certain circumstances it would be difficult to carry out repairs when tenants are still there. It depends on what the repairs are and the extent of the damage. If there were extensive damage then a Section 21 notice would be useless. If a ceiling had come down for example, how could you wait more than two months to deal with that? You would need to use your insurance policy to rehouse the tenants on a temporary basis.
There could be circumstances, I suppose, where tenants were requesting work/upgrades which the landlord was not required to carry out, but that would surely be handled by explaining what is required by law and what is not.
@: Andy Marshall. Obviously politicians have not heard the saying, "Empty vessels make most sound".
Part II - make that 16 housing ministers in 13 years !! What hope for the housing in this country
Well said Robin. 👍
Ellie, there is so called maintenance or minor repairs, damage is usually much more and caused by the Tenants much harder to fix than it was to do the first day.
I know this from the time I spent fixing damaged fire doors, Frames and broken locks with their cursed Euro cylinders with thumb screw inside to prevent anyone getting locked inside in case of fire. Tenants changed the locks but Tenants leave without giving you the key so your own spare key no
good, worse if room is left locked. The unbelievable damage they done changing the lock they didn’t know about the concealed screw behind the face plate. Anyway the locks they installed don’t have a thumb screw and you have no keys so almost possible to get cylinder out as the mechanism has to be lined up but as well the manufacturers are so stupid they are now making them anti- drill anti snap, who is going to be drilling them only the owners, burglars are not messing around like that just burst. Licensing Scheme’s is a good reason to want older properties vacant you try replacing doors and frames, drilling , planning and banging. Council’s looking for extra washing & cooking facilities. I had to put in additional cooker, sink, toilet and hand basin, lift flooring to run wires for Emergency lighting and Fire Alarm systems. Ok every room full of their belongings, not room to move sometimes people working from home or worse still on Benefit stuck in your way all day. I would love to see those Regulation’s do it so full of bull. Landlords are now everyone mug, whether its Rent 2 Rent making double off Lld’s backs, lease purchase options or Corporate new Big Boys given unfair advantage and haven’t they grabbed 10% of the Market in jig time and don’t need a license if more units than three in a Block yes They could make it up.
That is an excellent post, Michael, about the problems landlords face with repairs.
Damage is frequently caused by tenants - and sometimes difficult to fix. A while back I had young men who broke everything through both negligence and messing around e.g. pulling handles off doors. I did fix everything myself as breakages occurred and didn't charge them anything - and they took that for granted, too. I can just hear them now "Cinderellie come and fix this door!"
Tenants' careless misuse of bathrooms can be a problem as well.
You are right about licensing requirements- can be unreasonable - very heavy burdens placed on landlords.
And very, very difficult to carry out repairs when tenants block access with their belongings etc.
I have encountered all the difficulties that you have.
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