Landlords can bear the brunt of longer notice periods due to charging high rents, according to Generation Rent.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, the tenant group’s chief executive Ben Twomey acknowledged that moving from two months to four months’ notice meant landlords couldn’t re-access their property for another two months and might have to delay its sale. However, he added: “Potential homelessness, being driven into poverty, the huge costs of a move, they’re not equivalent.

“Renters need that bit of extra time and space in order to avoid the worst possible outcomes. Landlords can bear that cost because of the enormous amount of money we’re paying in rent already.”

Unprotected

Twomey was asked whether the resulting change in renter legislation would mean more landlords feeling unprotected, forcing them to put properties up for sale, resulting in less available rental accommodation.

Twomey agreed that short term, this was a risk, but added: “At the moment, if you were to sell your home as a landlord and kick the tenant out, you’d be out within two months, the clock starts ticking, many people find themselves homeless. We need to change that to give more protections.”

Housebuilding

He said he would welcome the landlord lobby supporting Generation Rent to give more protections around eviction and called on the government to speed up its housebuilding plans.

“We need homes available at an affordable rent where people live, but the problem right now - because that takes time – is that eviction protections are so weak and rents are so high that you see the enormous amount of suffering in our country and those two things can still be addressed through other measures,” he added.

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