Ministers have committed to give buy-to-let landlords more powers to evict unruly tenants who ruin their neighbours’ lives through persistent noise or by being drunk and disorderly.
The new measures form part of Rishi Sunak plans for “immediate and visible” punishments for anti-social behaviour, which will be unveiled his week, as he vows to crack down on the problem “once and for all”.
Sunak said: “Anti-social behaviour undermines the basic right of people to feel safe in the place they call home.
“The public have rightly had enough – which is why I am determined to restore people’s confidence that those responsible will be quickly and visibly punished.
“This action plan maps out how we will tackle this issue with the urgency it deserves and stamp out these crimes once and for all – so that wherever you live, you can feel safe in, and proud of your community.”
His long-awaited strategy will include measures to force vandals and those daubing graffiti to clean up their own messes within 48 hours, while wearing jumpsuits or high-visibility jackets.
Offenders could also wash police cars and do unpaid work in shops, as part of the ‘zero-tolerance approach’ to those blighting their communities.
Ben Beadle, chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), said: “Anti-social tenants blight the lives of fellow renters and their neighbours. Plans to end ‘no explanation’ repossessions risk making it harder to tackle such behaviour.
“Whilst we will study the detail of the Government’s plans carefully, we welcome its commitment to strengthen the ability of landlords to evict unruly tenants. It follows extensive campaigning by the NRLA to ensure swift and effective action can be taken against those causing misery in their communities.
“The law must be on the side of the victims of anti-social behaviour and we are glad that the Government agrees.”
Polling by the NRLA has found that 50% of landlords have at some point attempted to repossess a property because of a tenant’s anti-social or criminal behaviour.
Of this group 84% had received no help in tackling it from their local authority and 75% had no assistance from the police in dealing with anti-social tenants.
Sunak has I suspect just realised how short his own tenure is and this is an attempt to try to get some landlords back on side. A bit late after the conservative run in power of Landlord Bashing all the way for the last 10years +. No doubt Labour, Greens, Lib dems would have been even worse. So if by fluke this happens the massive costs to Landlords using the s8 system with the added costs and delays of vampire lawyers is not going to be a good outcome. I predict it will be manipulated in such a way that the Lndlords come out as the bad boys either way. With sky high costs using a s8 model few landlords will want to meet the speculative costs of evicting anti social tenants at s8 enhance costs. So if they do they will be screwed with sky high irrecoverable costs, if they don’t they will be deemed the bad boys for not taking action. So heads you lose tails you lose. Why not have policians play russian roulette using a landlords gun where all chambers have a live bullet – amounts to the same game. Perhaps my analogy is a little extreme but I guess others may well have the same views?
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Be very interesting to see what these extra “powers” will be. Will landlords still have to provide proof of antisocial behaviour to evict, will they still have to pay to go to court? Let’s see later this week what “immediate and visible” punishments for anti-social behaviour” actually materialise. Why mouth off about it now if a full announcement is going to come this week. Why not wait a couple of days?
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