A landlord's group has hit out angrily at the charity leading a media/news campaign sending out a story to the press that more than 200,000 may have been evicted because they had requested their landlords to carry out repairs.

The group said that the report that was published with British Gas had deliberately misled the public and the media by not highlighting some very important figures. The 200,000 tenants supposedly evicted due to maintenance requests only represented just over 2% of the total of nine million people renting privately. 

 

The group also points out that the figures refer "only to tenants facing evictions and not actual evictions" and that the report did not mention how many of the tenants had failed to pay their rent on time or tenancys coming to an end.

 

There was also no mention of evictions being brought about because of anti-social behaviour.

Alan Ward, chairman of the Landlord group, said: “Shelter are once again needlessly playing to people’s fears.

“Whilst I accept that there are landlords who should be rooted out of the sector, the fact that almost 98% of tenants have not faced the problems should be a sober reminder to Shelter that the majority of tenants face no problems whatsoever with their landlord.

“The best response to the problems that Shelter identifies is to encourage more good landlords into the sector in order to boost the supply of homes to rent and to provide tenants with genuine choices over where they live.

"Shelter’s continued vilification of landlords will serve only to put the good landlords off further investment in the sector and push tenants into the hands of those operating under the radar.”

Official figures published by the Ministry of Justice in February shows that last year homes in the private and public sectors repossessed through the courts was 37,739 homes: "a combined figure that equates to only 0.5% of all rented homes in England".

On the subject of "revenge evictions" Housing Minister Kris Hopkins said:"Today's YouGov poll clearly shows that 'revenge evictions' are rare, while the recent English Housing Survey showed the vast majority of tenants satisfied with the service their landlords provide."

However he did add that the government had invested £6.5 million to stamp out rogue practises within the sector.