Section 21 evictions are one of the leading causes of homelessness. Data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government released last week, shows that the number of households facing homelessness has exceeded 320,000 between 2023-2024 – an 8% increase from the previous year and the highest on record.
Crisis analysis of the government figures found 79,500 households have sought help from their council because their short-term tenancy abruptly ended. This includes 26,150 households being served a no-fault eviction.
The lack of security in the private rented sector is something that Lucy, an Acorn member in Bristol, has experienced.
The bill means others like her will not have to go through a turbulent relationship with their landlord.
“I’ve lived in my flat for six years,” she said. “Last year, the lettings agency made me sign a new six month tenancy agreement, and towards the end of the tenancy they told me the rent was increasing by almost 50%.”
“I questioned this, pointing out that the new agreement said no increase would be made until October 2024, and asked if we could negotiate the amount the rent was to go up as there had been no improvements made to the flat. Instead of responding to my questions, they sent me a section 21 eviction notice.”
“I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, worried about having nowhere to live but struggling to meet the new rent rise. In the end I felt I had no choice but to accept the increase.”
Anny Cullum, a political officer at Acorn, a tenants union, said the bill is a “huge step forward for renters” and ends the insecurity millions of renters face by banning no-fault evictions.
She said: “People always have the fear of eviction hanging over them, and in the Tories iteration of the bill, there were quite wide loopholes that could still be exploited by landlords, even when section 21 was being banned.
“What Labour’s iteration has done is close those loopholes and will give renters a real sense of security. So you can expect to stay somewhere for as long as you want, provided that you behave yourself as a tenant, which is great, and there’s only a few reasons why a landlord can evict you if you haven’t done anything wrong.”
Will the Renters’ Rights Bill help renters?
If the Renters’ Rights Bill is amended, landlords will only be allowed to evict a tenant through two ways: moving a family member in, or if they want to sell.
Tenants will need to be in a property for four months before they can be given two months’ eviction notice. This means a landlord must guarantee that a tenant will stay in a property for six months.
Where the bill is strong on improving standards and security, critics say it doesn’t do enough to tackle high rents – one of the top concerns for renters today with one in four renters paying over half their income on rent.
Conor O’Shea, policy and public affairs manager at Generation Rent, said landlords may still have the power to raise rents to unaffordable levels with tenants potentially pushed out of their homes.
“The bill is still weak on affordability. At the moment a landlord can raise the rent enough to price out a tenant, or in other words, a back door eviction. This leaves renters vulnerable to huge rent hikes.
“We want to see the bill strengthened to protect against the unfair and unaffordable rent increases that are decimating renters’ lives.”
One way to counteract this, according to O’Shea, is to strengthen tenants’ right to challenge unfair rent increases in tribunal courts.
“The Labour manifesto claimed very specifically that they were going to protect tenants’ right to challenge unfair rent increases,” he said. “If you challenge your rent in tribunal courts, at the moment, rents can go up as well as down, which means no one ever used it because they worried they might end up paying more than they were going to.”
Another way of capping record-high rents is through rent controls – but this idea has proven controversial.
Labour is taking some action in the Renters’ Rights Bill through a ban on ‘bidding wars’ – where tenants compete for a property by bidding above the asking price.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: “Seeing the back of section 21 evictions will be overwhelmingly welcome, but this cannot leave room for loopholes. Unscrupulous landlords must be left unable to find workarounds – such as ramping up the rent to ridiculous levels – so they can still force their tenants out.
“To make renting genuinely safer, secure, and more affordable, the bill must go further. It must limit in-tenancy rent increases so they’re in line with either inflation or wage growth. Renters must be protected from eviction for two years, and discriminatory practices that drive homelessness, like demands for huge sums of rent in advance, must be stamped out.”
The government is understood to be in favour of overhauling rental contracts to a rolling one-month basis – rather than fixed term – to stop landlords asking for more than three months’ rent in advance.
Long-term, Labour is hoping building 1.5 million homes, including prioritising social rent homes, while in power to reduce rents, and in effect, end the housing crisis.
Acorn’s Cullum suggests tenants are urgent for change now.
“We know that Labour are saying they want to build a lot of houses and they’re hoping that a lot of supply will mean that the prices go down. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not, but people are struggling now and we won’t see the fruits of that for the next five or 10 years. We need to be prices controlled now.”
Another change is the introduction of a decent homes standard to force landlords to tackle issues, such as damp and mould. It already exists in social housing but does not exist in the private-rented sector.
The change will also extend Awaab’s Law to the private rented sector. The bill was brought in by former housing secretary Michael Gove after two-year-old Awaab Ishak died from complications following mould exposure in Rochdale but currently only applies to social housing.
More council enforcement officers to deal with damp and mould issues will be needed, campaigners said.
“You can have the best rules in the world, but if you haven’t got the boots on the ground to enforce them, then they’re not really worth the paper they’re written on. We are hoping to invest in local councils so they’re actually able to police the sector properly,” Cullum added.
Chris Norris, policy and campaigns director of the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), said the reforms need to secure the confidence of both tenants and responsible landlords.
He claimed 82% of private sector tenants are satisfied with their accommodation, compared to 74% in the social rented sector.
“The reality is that the vast majority of tenants already have a good relationship with their landlord. This should be the norm for everyone in the sector.”
He argued the bill must not worsen an already chronic shortage of homes, with an average of 21 tenants competing for every available home to rent.
“All this would do is weaken tenants’ purchasing power, making it more difficult for them to hold rogue and criminal landlords to account as a result,” he added.
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