About 700,000 renters served with ‘no-fault’ eviction notices since start of pandemic
Some interesting challenges surfaced in this article, remembering that it is more difficult for people in rural settings to find new homes and some very good news about the decision to keep the pressure on developers to bring forward affordable housing.
About 700,000 renters are estimated to have been served with “no-fault” eviction notices since the start of the pandemic, despite a government promise to scrap the practice.
The estimate is based on polling of a cross-section of private renters and comes two years to the day that the government announced “private landlords will no longer be able to evict tenants from their homes at short notice and without good reason”.
But the so-called section 21 eviction notices are still in use and ministers are now facing a new push to deliver on their promise from a new coalition for reform of renters’ rights, which includes the charities Generation Rent, Crisis and Shelter, as well as Citizens Advice and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The renters’ reform bill, which promised to abolish no-fault evictions, was announced in the last Queen’s speech in December 2019 but has not yet been delivered.
Countryside campaigners have welcomed a quiet U-turn by the government on one aspect of affordable housing policy. Ministers have signalled that they will not raise the minimum threshold at which developers of new housing estates are required to provide affordable units from 10 to 40 or 50 homes, as originally proposed in draft planning reforms.
Tom Fyans, the deputy chief executive of CPRE, said: “Rural communities are facing unprecedented pressure when it comes to housing – rising house prices and low rates of affordable housebuilding are only making this situation more precarious. So, it is a massive relief and hugely welcome that the government has decided to drop its proposal to massively loosen the duty for developers to build affordable homes.”