Jonathan Bramhall of the DCLG's private sector division (Department for Communities and Local Government) announced this week, that the department is looking into introducing new laws that would effectively "outlaw" retaliatory evictions. A practice operated by some landlords when receiving complaints and requests from tenants about improving or repairing their rented homes.

Mr.Bramhall made his announcement at the CIEH's (Chartered Institute of Environmental Health)sixth annual housing and health conference held in London.

In his speech he told the attendees that the government had held a consultation on the private sector which had finished in March. After carefully considering the information from the report that if any new laws were to be introduced, then they would be announced over the summer. He again reiterated the government's commitment to improving tenants' conditions of housing and to weed out the rogue landlords.

Mr. Bramhall also reported that his department had received over a thousand complaints about retaliatory evictions and the Citizens Advice Bureau backed the claims up by saying, that they too were aware of this practice as tenants had been requesting help and advice on this matter.

He suggested that a way to combat this threat could be by stopping landlords using section 21 of the Housing Act 1988, if it could be proved that the property had health threatening hazards. The government could also consider the extension of rent recovery orders if the tenants had been illegally evicted or the property  had health and hazard issues.

He did confirm that at the moment a decision had not been made, although he did state that the DCLG in June will be publishing a new tenants' charter and in July, they would be issuing a code of practice for landlords on how to manage their properties.

Mr. Bramhall said that regarding licences for HMO's that they did not agree with some councils that had used a blanket approach by not selecting those landlords that were bad: “The risk is that good landlords are caught up and that imposes on them extra costs. We want to focus on the bad landlords.”

 

Bob Mayho CIEH's principal policy officer said: “The CIEH is in active discussions with Better Regulation Delivery Office to set up a national expert panel on housing issues.
 
“In relation to the Government's consideration of the next steps on their review of conditions in the sector the CIEH hoped that proposals would be brought forward to reform Section 21 and bring to an end retaliatory evictions.

"The CIEH has also long called for a review of the HHSRS operating and enforcement guidance and in its response to the Government discussion paper had supported a relaxation of the onerous bureaucracy associated with selective licensing schemes.”
 

 

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