Member Article

Controversial Section 21 Law set to be abolished

Following a major overhaul of the rental sector, the Government has announced that private landlords will no longer be able to evict tenants from their homes without good reason.

As part of a complete overhaul of the sector, ministers have today outlined plans for a consultation to abolish Section 21 evictions – so called ‘no-fault’ evictions. This will bring an end to private landlords uprooting tenants from their homes with as little as eight weeks’ notice after their fixed-term contracts come to an end. Nina Patel, head of Housing and Social Welfare at solicitors, Broudie Jackson Canter, said: “It’s extremely encouraging that the Government has decided to consult on abolishing no fault evictions. The potential change in legislation would mean that private landlords would no longer be able to evict tenants from their homes at short notice and without good reason, and this is a huge victory for tenants’ rights.

“Section 21 is notoriously hard to challenge and has become one of the leading causes of family homelessness across England and is responsible for unfairly and unnecessarily disrupting the lives of millions of people. We have supported a number of clients who have been evicted under this legislation, and we look forward to seeing this discriminatory and unfair no-fault eviction law abolished.

Although this is an extremely heartening development, we need to ensure that tenants are supported and enabled and that additional methods are put into place to prevent landlords from evicting tenants through other unfair methods, such as rent hikes to push tenants out.“

No-fault evictions have already been banned in Scotland and housing charity Shelter is currently running a campaign to persuade its government to introduce similar legislation in Wales.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Olivia Solomon .