Thousands of tenants could be evicted ahead of Section 21 ban

Landlords are moving fast to evict tenants as the government’s ban on Section 21 evictions looms, campaigners have warned.

Housing charities want the passage of the Renters’ Rights Bill to be sped up, with more than 100,000 households now having been evicted under Section 21 since Theresa May promised to ban it in April 2019.

The Renters Reform Coalition, which brings together 21 organisations supporting private renters, says such orders could be used thousands of times during the wait for the bill to become law.

The group warned that based on current trends, more than 15,600 rental households will be evicted by bailiffs in the first six months of 2025. A figure that represents a 12.2% increase on the first half of last year.

The legislation returned to the House of Commons this week for its remaining stages, having passed through its first and second reading and scrutiny from a parliamentary committee last year. It will then head to the House of Lords for further scrutiny.

Lucy Tiller, policy manager for the RRC, said the legislation is unlikely to come into force until summer.

“Some of the increase is because there was a massive downturn during the pandemic and we just still on the increase from that, but it is definitely the case that there are a huge number of Section 21 evictions going through at the moment”, she told the press. “We think, since the last government pledged in 2019 to ban Section 21s, over 100,000 households have been threatened with homelessness and 1,000,000 have received Section 21 evictions, so these are huge numbers.”

An amendment to the proposed legislation would stop landlords demanding more than a month’s rent in advance from a new tenant, with housing charity Shelter dubbing it a “discriminatory practice”.

But Polly Neate, the charity’s chief executive called on the government to go further. She said: “With benefit recipients nearly twice as likely to be blocked from renting by demands for rent up front, the Government is absolutely right to use the Renters’ Rights Bill to reign this discriminatory practice in.

“But paying to get a foot in the door isn’t the only cost renters contend with. We regularly hear from tenants who are forced to up sticks and move when their landlord hikes the rent to ridiculous levels – last year 900 renters a day moved because of a rent hike they couldn’t afford.

“To truly make renting more secure and affordable, the Bill must limit in-tenancy rent increases in line with either inflation or wage growth. It must also stamp out the other discriminatory practices, like unnecessary demands for guarantors, that drive homelessness by locking people out of private renting.”

A Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “Our Renters’ Rights Bill will deliver on our promise to transform the private rented sector, so that people can put down roots and save for the future without fear of being evicted on a whim – including plans to end ‘no fault’ evictions for all existing and new tenants at the same time.

“Through our Plan for Change, we will tackle the wider housing crisis we inherited head on, building the homes we need, delivering the biggest boost in social and affordable housing in a generation.”

 

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9 Comments

  1. Highstreetblues

    Shelter have caused more problems for tenants than helping. Their incessant negative lobbying has created mass evictions, rent increases and good landlords to sell. Why does anyone listen to them?

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  2. LR10

    These bodies, which claim to advocate for tenants, have ended up making things more challenging for the very people they aim to help. Could it be that this outcome is intentional, designed to maintain their own relevance?

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  3. CountryLass

    I don’t disagree with the need for some sort of cap on in-tenancy increases, I think we all remember some of the landlords in London who increased rents by ridiculously huge amounts during the Olympics to try and cash in? Oh how I laughed when I found out many of them were left with empty properties during that time…

    However, it has to be a cap that is reasonable from both sides. For example, I’ve recently done a 50% increase, which sounds like a LOT. However, it was actually £100 a month. And the market rent for it is still three times what they are now paying. They moved in many years ago, and paid a low rent as they were helping to care for the landlord’s mother. She passed before Covid, and during that time they have still kept the low rent, whilst replacing the kitchen and financially they just couldn’t make it work. So, we agreed that there would be a £100 a month increase each year for the next three years, and then assess again at that point. And I have tenancies where they haven’t increased the rent in 10 years. So, a blanket cap does not work in those situations, there has to be some sort of criteria for out-of-th-box situations.

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  4. LVYO30

    Shelter claims guarantors and upfront rent payments are discriminatory, and you could argue they are correct. But landlords need to ensure, as much as possible, that they are letting to someone who can pay the rent, and if they are unsure, that there is a guarantor or upfront payment in place.

    Remove these and landlords will simply avoid any uncertainty during the refencing process. There are plenty of tenants to choose from!

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    1. CountryLass

      Which will then feed into the narrative of ‘Landlords only care about money’ and cause more hate for the PRS, giving more push and power to these propaganda-machines to get more power over the sector…

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      1. LVYO30

        This RRC has been strangely silent about Lambeth [Labour] Council’s 200 S21s.

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  5. Rosebush

    Maybe if Gov. hadn’t introduced s24 landlords would not have the need to increase rent. Many landlords are not making any profit on their rentals. Increasing CGT is another reason landlords are selling up. As far as an increase in s21 evictions personally I’m not surprised as landlords just want rid of bad tenants before the new legislation becomes law.

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  6. KByfield04

    You can’t ban S21’s (ignoring warnings) and then bemoan the cliff-edge impact that was always inevitable. Some will have decided they’ve done the landlord journey for long enough and will exit. However, many doing this will be doing so to remove tenants they consider too great a risk to house without access to S21 and an ever-increasing court backlog/wait. This was one of the industry’s primary concerns from the offset- but the parties campaigning stuck fingers in ears and dismissed it as ‘self-interest’- reap what you sow people.
    As so many others already agree, the RRB will have one of the most negative impacts on tenants of any legislation implemented in the last 30+ years.

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  7. KByfield04

    Lets also give the stats in here some context…

    100,000 households ‘evicted’ since 2019 – so 20,000 a year or, looking at it another way 0.5% of PRS tenancies.

    Since when do stats get reported as ‘we think’….and where has the 1,000,000 figure come from? Are they referencing S21’s often served on a tenant when THEY have decided/requested to vacate?! No context to this figure- but let’s print it anyway.

    Banning advance rent will harm/cost far more tenants than it will protect. You can’t legislate to benefit/protect one category ignoring all others- in this instance placing Benefit recipients ahead of tenants, newly relocated, new job/startups, etc.

    Has anyone yet met a landlord that evicts a tenant on a ‘whim’?! No, me neither.

    Laughable nonsense- with a scattering of some minor improvements.

    Here’s an idea: Bin the RRB. Implement a national property licensing framework that is unilateral, well funded and digitally underpinned, mandate digitising all compliance (gas certs, EPC’s, EICR’s, PAT tests, etc etc) and implement Property MOTs, ringfence funds for proactive enforcement against legitimate rogue landlords and agents, professionalise/ROPA the industry into a profession. Job done.

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