Private Member's Bill on revenge evictions to be presented to Parliament

lulalola

Thought this would be of interest to the board. A Private Member's Bill to change the law to end revenge eviction will be presented to Parliament on November 28th. This would mean that landlords could not issue a Section 21 to a tenant who had made a legitimate request for repairs. Shelter have more info on their site and there's a petition to send to your local MP to ask them to attend the debate. http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/fixing_private_renting/9_million_renters

stator

We need a rebalancing of the law which currently favours the LL but it's never gonna happen with the Tories in power.

cwcw

stator wrote: »

We need a rebalancing of the law which currently favours the LL but it's never gonna happen with the Tories in power.

Labour must not have been able to find any time in their 13 years in government to do anything about it. Too busy selling off gold for pennies, opening the doors to mass immigration, signing up to the Lisbon treaty with no referendum, inflating an asset bubble to prolong the economic cycle, and leaving the country with its largest peace time budget deficit.

jjlandlord

This is a diversion. The 'problem' that bill is supposed to solve only concerns a very small number of tenancies.

cwcw wrote: »

opening the doors to mass immigration.

'mass' immigration started much earlier than that, and has been very good for the economy...

tberry6686

love to know how this would work. Or are they saying that a LL cannot ever evict a tenant who has made a request for repairs ?

lulalola

tberry6686 wrote: »

love to know how this would work. Or are they saying that a LL cannot ever evict a tenant who has made a request for repairs ?

From the Shelter blog:

"We know that over 200,000 renters across England were evicted or served with an eviction notice in the last year because they complained about a problem in their home. And that 1 in 12 renters have avoided asking their landlord to repair a problem or improve conditions because they were scared of eviction.
Landlords have a legal responsibility to carry out certain repairs. The Tenancies (Reform) Bill will restrict the use of no-fault eviction notices when landlords are not meeting this responsibility.
Landlords who have not protected their tenants’ deposit or have not licensed their property when they are required to do so are already prevented from serving no fault eviction notices. This Bill is simply applying the same principle to poor conditions.
This will put a stop to retaliatory eviction. Landlords will no longer be able to evict renters in response to a legitimate complaint about poor conditions. It will also improve conditions. By giving renters the confidence to report problems, law-abiding landlords will be better able to maintain the standard of their tenant’s home.
What does this mean in practice?
Although the actual text of the Bill is still being drafted, we believe the following measures are likely to be included.

1. Landlords will be prevented from evicting their tenant(s) in response to a local authority intervention about the condition of their property. They will be unable to serve a no-fault ‘Section 21’ eviction notice for 6 months following the issue of a local authority improvement or hazard awareness notice.
2. Landlords will be prevented from evicting their tenant(s) in response to a legitimate, written complaint about the condition of the property. Local authorities will have to confirm that this complaint is legitimate.

Crucially, this Bill will not allow tenants to use spurious or malicious complaints as a defence. It will place no additional burden on good, law-abiding landlords. And it will not add a discretionary element to Section 21 hearings."


http://blog.shelter.org.uk/2014/09/tenancies-reform-bill/?_ga=1.195586543.2106678166.1413997019

princeofpounds

This is a diversion. The 'problem' that bill is supposed to solve only concerns a very small number of tenancies.

In my experience it is a serious issue.

I have no better stats at the moment than the Shelter ones helpfully quoted, but whilst is a small proportion of tenancies, it is not that small.

Perhaps even more serious is the hidden problem, that for every revenge eviction there are probably several tenants putting up with substandard conditions for fear of losing their tenure. Certainly that has been a major issue for the dozens of younger people I have known over the years in the lower end of the market. Whilst I appreciate that is an anecdotal comment, it is also a clear problem for certain areas of the market.

Unfortunately, I think policing revenge evictions is hard. I think that a positive measure to make them less practical, and in fact improve societal condition as a whole, would simply be to lengthen minimum tenure.

6 months is a ridiculous minimum when it is shorter than a school year, even a gym or phone membership. It is not at all conducive to social stability or family life. Personally I would make minimum tenure for S21 at least a year. Possibly two, but I realise there does need to be a balance with rental market liquidity.

jjlandlord

It is not a major issue.
Furthermore, landlords do not want to change tenants every 6 months.

This is politics and as such it plays on emotions and prejudice, not facts and reason.

sandsni

stator wrote: »

We need a rebalancing of the law which currently favours the LL but it's never gonna happen with the Tories in power.

There is a huge part of the law that now favours and protects the tenant. Compulsory LL registration (in NI and Scotland at least), deposit protection, and Environmental Health departments that can compel LLs to carry out repairs. I'd like to know who is going to define a "legitimate" request and how.


Tenants should be protected but private LLs, many of whom are simply trying to provide a decent service while protecting a legitimate family asset, should not always be made the scapegoat. Not all private LLs are out to fleece their tenants.


Do you believe private LLs should be forced to keep tenants indefinitely, even if their (the LL's) circumstances change? That is why "non-fault" evictions exist. Would a tenant be willing to stay in their rental property and continue paying rent if THEIR circumstances changed or they decided they didn't like the place anymore? "Retaliatory" evictions are absolutely wrong, but what if a LL can genuinely not afford the repairs and decides it's no longer worth the hassle to rent out the property, or needs significant time and preferably an empty property to be able to carry out the repairs properly?

whalster

As said by many above and now taken up by the RLA rather than their previous stance of apesement toward Shelter there are very few revenge evictions in reality and licensing is just another money making scheme to create a few well paid public sector jobs with an even better paid public sector manager sat in an over warm office in an overpriced leather chair .

Most landlords want their tenants to stay in the property as long as possible it makes business sense , most of mine have been in longer than a year a high proportion two years or more and some on a scale rising to my longest which is eight years .

Someone above mentioned having a mobile phone contract longer than six months , this is true but the person taking that contract is liable for payment of the full 12 or 18 months which is maybe say 300-450 pounds until they are out of contract .
How many tenants do you think would want to lock themselves into a two or three year contract leaving themselves liable for the whole term rent at uk average ish say £14000 to £21000 ?

Before someone mentions break clauses as wth commercial then this would not work as they usually involve an uptic incumbent liability which would still leave a liability for the tenant .

Tell tenants the facts and I am sure they would agree that flexibility is a lot better option than blighting the rest of their life being chased through the courts for three years worth of money, never being able to buy a house in the future not even get one of those mobile phone contracts again just because they dd not fulfil a contract that they signed because Shelter and others believe it is a good idea .

thesaint

I would like to know if I would be prevented from evicting a tenant that had been served a Sec 21 prior to my tenant making a complaint about repairs.