Shelter is back on its bandwagon of wanting more protection for tenants in spite of the government extending the eviction ban until the 20th September and landlords having to give renters six months notice.

The housing charity is still saying that there will be a massive hike in homelessness and that there is a greater need now for more urgent measures to be put into place.

The charity is claiming that the number of renters in England who are behind with their rent has doubled during the pandemic because of financial problems.

Shelter says that around a third of calls from tenants to its helpline since the end of February were from people who felt that they were worried about losing their home, with the charity saying that they believed 42% of those were in danger of becoming homeless.

Apparently the charity claims that 174,000 tenants have already been told by their landlord they could be evicted and apparently 58,000 moved to new properties when asked to leave since the lockdown came into force.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, commented: “The government must not waste this precious time that it has bought itself.”

He added: “Once parliament resumes, judges must be given extra powers to stop renters losing their homes because of rent arrears caused by coronavirus.

“And longer term, we desperately need major reforms to make renting fairer, affordable and more secure.”

Another charity Crisis is demanding the government to create a longer term strategy rather than just the short term extension of the ban.

Matt Downie, director of policy at Crisis, told the press: “This is not the first time that we’ve had to reach the 11th hour to find out whether people desperately worried about homelessness will be protected from evictions.

“It creates deep concern, stress amongst people themselves who know that landlords want to evict them, but also for all of us trying to make sure we don’t see another wave of homelessness.

“It’s not a responsible way to go about managing people living in precarious situations up and down the country, and we very much hope September 20 doesn’t lead to us having to have exactly the same conversation on the 18th or 19th of September.”

Richard Merrick of PIMS, said: “Again these figures are unsubstantiated and of the 58,000 tenants that had moved during lockdown because they were ‘asked to’, many may have done so because they just wanted to move to a different property or area anyway.”