We value the contribution made by responsible landlords who provide quality homes to their tenants and believe landlords must enjoy robust grounds for possession where there is good reason to take their property back. To support this, the bill clarifies and expands grounds for possession, while ensuring tenants are protected from arbitrary eviction and given enough time to find a new home.
Landlords must, as in the current system, go to court if a tenant does not leave. They will need to provide evidence that the ground is met. For mandatory grounds, the court must award possession if the ground is proven. For discretionary grounds, the court can consider if eviction is reasonable, even when the ground is met.
Where a tenant is at fault, landlords can give notice using the relevant grounds at any point in the tenancy. This includes where a tenant commits antisocial behaviour, is damaging the property, or falls into significant arrears.
We will introduce new protections for tenants who temporarily fall into rent arrears, supporting both parties by preventing tenancies which are otherwise viable from ending. We will increase the mandatory threshold for eviction from 2 to 3 months’ arrears and increase the notice period from 2 weeks to 4. This will allow tenants more time to repay arrears and remain in their homes, while ensuring landlords do not face unsustainable costs. Landlords can also continue to use the discretionary rent arrears grounds, for example if rent is repeatedly late.
As well as tenants, landlords’ own circumstances can sometimes change, and the bill includes strengthened rights to reclaim properties when it’s necessary, for example to sell or move in. Tenants will benefit from a 12-month protected period at the beginning of a tenancy, during which landlords cannot evict them to move in or sell the property. Landlords will need to provide 4 months’ notice when using these grounds, giving tenants more time to find a new home, and reducing the risk of homelessness.
In some sectors, it is necessary to move tenants on where accommodation is intended for a particular purpose, for example where the current tenant may no longer need the accommodation or is no longer eligible to occupy it. We will therefore introduce a limited number of possession grounds to ensure there is an adequate supply of properties in vital sectors such as temporary and supported accommodation, and for critical housing schemes such as ‘stepping stone’ accommodation.
We will also expand ‘ground 6’ for redevelopment to relevant social landlords to support redevelopment of properties where required, and introduce a new possession ground for relevant social landlords where a tenant has been provided with alternative accommodation while redevelopment affecting the tenant’s original home is carried out. Where the landlord seeks possession under these grounds, they will usually need to provide alternative accommodation that meets specific requirements.
To support compliance with requirements introduced elsewhere by the bill, we will prevent landlords gaining possession if they have not properly protected a tenant’s deposit or registered their property on the private rented sector database. We will ensure landlords are always able to rectify non-compliance, so they are not prevented from regaining possession indefinitely. These restrictions will not apply to antisocial behaviour grounds.
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