Ben Beadle, the Chief Executive of the NRLA, has told LandlordZONE that abolishing Section 21 evictions might sound noble, but it's not the silver bullet to solve the homelessness crisis, as many campaigning groups and MPs often claim.

During the recent Renters’ Rights Bill second reading in parliament last week, many if not all Labour MPs who spoke during the debate repeated their belief that Section 21 evictions are the root cause of homelessness in the UK. But does Beadle agree with them this is the case?

“Whether or not some landlords are misusing Section 21 is a point to be argued about, but I suspect a lot of things are being conflated with landlords selling and using a Section 21 notice to achieve that, and that’s their absolute right to do that,” he says.

“Selling a property is the most common reason for Section 21 notices being used and the most recent figures show that. It’s a nonsense to say Section 21 is the leading cause of homelessness – in a few years’ time it will be Section 8."

Beadle says the NRLA's campaigning areas haven’t changed since the political change from blue to red – and in particular he's concerned about the ability of the courts to process evictions in a timely manner.

Challenge

“This is important given the new housing minister wants tenants to challenge rent increases, via First Tier Tribunals more easily, but to achieve this the system must have the ability and capacity to deal with the increase in case work that will bring," he adds.

Beadle says that Labour’s promise to improve the tribunal and court processes through digitalisation must be made good with action given Rayner’s recent promise to get the Bill into law ‘ASAP’.

“The problem isn’t court capacity so much – although there is a huge backlog that needs to be cleared – it’s more about having a system where evictions are looked at by someone with a brain before they get to court and working out the best way to deal with them,” he says.

“Many say 'digitalisation is the key, but the court system has been trying to digitise for years and so it’s like the ’Colonel’s secret recipe’ – no one knows quite what it is.

“The bigger point is that a better magistrate court system needs to ready because, once a date is set for Section 21 evictions to be banned, it will create a cliff edge and possession rates will rocket – which is what happened in Wales.”

Beadle also makes the argument that such problems will be bad for renters – i.e. landlords will continue to wait six months or more to complete evictions – tenants will also be waiting the same time to hold bad landlords to account over issues such as disrepair.

“There needs to be an investment in the courts as caseload increases exponentially,” he adds.

Taxing problems

“Our argument has always been that the best way to keep tenants in their homes is to keep landlords in the market, and the best way to do that is to make it more interesting for them to stay and, for example, not to tax them on their revenue but on their profits.

“You don’t make life more difficult for them, you make life for them a bit easier. But that argument doesn’t wash with the current administration.”

Pushed on whether there is anything in the Bill that the NRLA likes, Beadle says the rental property database, which will see all rented homes in the UK registered including landlord and compliance details, is a good idea.

“It should enable good landlords to show that they are good, enable tenants to make a much more informed decision about the homes that they are moving into and help authorities to be really targeted about how they enforce the regulation, and for those reasons it seem to be one of the more palatable things within the Bill.”

The Renters’ Rights Bill is now waiting to go forward to its Committee Stage in parliament, and is expected to become law in the New Year.