Rental Reform due shortly

The long awaited Rental Reform Bill that has been mooted for many years has taken a step closer with a new date of a “couple of months” now bieng promised by the government. Appearing on Sunday with Laura Keunnsberg yesterday the Housing Secretary Michael Gove said, “We’re bringing forward reforms a little later this year – in a couple of months’ time actually – to see how the private rental sector can be better regulated”. We’re not talking about rent controls or rent caps, but we are talking about protections for tenants.”

The abolition of the now infamous Section 21 notice is one of the main focus points of the new legislation and continues to be the government’s focus as Mr Give told Keunnsberg: “At the moment there’s a situation where tenants can be evicted without any fault on their part and some – a tiny minority – of unscrupulous landlords are using the threat of eviction to jack up rents and to victimise tenants.
“So it’s important to recognise … that a healthy private rental sector is absolutely vital to knowing we have the right people with the right homes at the right time. So we need to always protect tenants from unscrupulous landlords even as we also give landlords the right to get rid of anti-social tenants.”

Whilst we are supportive of The Renters Reform Bill at City Residential it is essential that legislation is introduced to enable landlords to evict those tenants that commit anti-social behaviour. It appears that the government has listened to the feedback from all stakeholders with the announcement this morning that new powers for landlords are part of the government’s so called Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan. This proposed legislation promises “a zero-tolerance approach to all forms of anti-social behaviour and give the police and local authorities the tools they need to tackle the problem.”