Prime minister Theresa May said that a consultation into repealing Section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act will be published “shortly with a view to introducing legislation later this year”.
She suggested that a timescale of six months is possible.
The timescale suggests that the ban could be in place as early as next spring. Once in place, it would mean that landlords and their agents could no longer reclaim rental properties without having a specific, legal reason.
Speaking to delegates at a housing conference in Manchester, May said that the Conservatives’ “truly radical reforms have come in our work to support those who rent.
“We are rebalancing the relationship between tenant and landlord, making major changes that will make an immediate and lasting impact on the lives of millions of families. In the private sector we have already capped the size of rent deposits and abolished letting fees, cutting the amount tenants have to find up-front and making it harder for landlords and agents to take advantage of desperate house-hunters.
“Now we are going further. So we are bringing to an end the practice of so-called ‘no fault’ evictions.”
It is interesting though that she made no mention of how they will push through the legislation to alter Section 8 and reform the relevant housing law in the time required.
The whole idea of reforming Section 21 is, in our opinion, long overdue and welcome news. It will offer more stability for tenants and as long as it is coupled with new Section 8 legislation allowing landlords to recover their properties if they sell, move back in or have bad tenants then should not prove an issue to the market.
As this was not mentioned it sounds to us a little bit like the first salvos in a campaign to win the tenant vote at any forthcoming election. The reality is that any legislation must be coupled with a change to Section 8 or the whole system will collapse and even this government doesn’t want that at the moment!