A Renters’ Reform Bill to fix a broken rental market

Please note: this blog refers to England only

Over the past year, the government took a number of steps to protect people’s livelihoods during the pandemic. The Job Retention Scheme protected millions from redundancies. The uplift to Universal Credit kept thousands of families afloat. Debt holidays provided essential breathing space to homeowners faced with an uncertain future.

But, the picture in the private rental market is more mixed. The eviction ban was essential and welcome — but ultimately a blunt tool that did little to stop renters building up an estimated £360 million in arrears. Instead, renters were encouraged to negotiate payment plans with their landlords. While we know that some landlords were supportive, others weren’t — 1 in 4 renters told us their landlord took no action in response to their arrears, and some were even threatened with eviction.

This situation highlights a long-standing problem in the private rental sector — the imbalance of power between landlords and tenants. Renters are often on short-term, precarious contracts, with landlords holding all the cards. When things go wrong, tenants don’t know where to turn.

This can be fixed

Next Tuesday, during the state opening of Parliament, the government will use the Queen’s Speech to set out its priorities for the future. It should use this as an opportunity to fix the rental market: by bringing forward its manifesto commitment for a Renters’ Reform Bill, which would end section 21 ’no-fault’ evictions. This Bill — first promised in 2019 — could be step change for renters, and it’s never been more needed.

Renters are trapped in unsafe homes

What we see in our housing data points to a growing crisis. Demand for advice has soared since the start of the year — we’re now helping one person every minute with a problem in their private rented property. Alongside concerns about arrears, we’ve seen a rise in people experiencing disrepair in their homes, and struggling to get their landlord to complete basic maintenance. Our research with tenants found that 2 in 3 had experienced maintenance issues — including dangerous hazards like exposed wiring and leaky roofs — in the last 3 months. During the pandemic, this has been even harder to cope with as tenants have been asked to stay at home.

Support when things go wrong

When landlords fail in their obligations like this, there’s often no one there to enforce the law. Technically, tenants can take their landlord to court — but that’s a daunting process and there are long waiting lists. Tenants can also complain to their local authority, but many don’t know how to go about this and when they do, only a quarter of complaints result in action against the landlord.

A secure home

Ultimately, many tenants don’t raise issues at all because they’re scared that making a complaint will result in their landlord evicting them. The structure of housing law enforces this fear — in normal times, landlords can evict tenants who have done nothing wrong through a Section 21 ‘no fault’ eviction notice.

This is why, at the start of the pandemic, the government had to step in. The fact that the government had little choice but to impose a ban on evictions for over a year, to prevent a wave of homelessness in the middle of a pandemic, shows it lacks the proper tools to protect renters.

Reform is needed now

Unlike other essential markets, the private rental sector has neither a regulator nor good regulation, meaning the levers to effect change just aren’t there. If energy companies behaved the same way as some landlords, they’d face a big fine. The government should take the same approach to the housing market.

The current eviction ban will lift at the end of this month. So there’s still time to take emergency measures — for the Treasury to step in and give renters the support they need to pay back arrears. But we also need to look to longer-term reform now.

The Queen’s Speech next week is the opportunity to make that happen. As well as ending ‘no-fault’ evictions, the Bill is an opportunity to promote longer, high quality tenancies, and to take steps to ensure that housing regulation is properly enforced. These 3 reforms would go a long way to giving renters safety and security in their homes, stabilising the rental market, and making it work better for tenants and good landlords alike.