In spite of this latest government’s policies mess an announcement was recently made of its intention to introduce the Renters Reform Bill into Parliament during this session.

During a recent Parliamentary session taking questions to Simon Clark, at the time  the new Housing Secretary, a few backbench MPs pressed for an exact date for when the Bill would be introduced into Parliament.

However the Housing Secretary failed to give any further details of the date but he re-emphasised that it would be some time this session and reiterated the PM’s pledge to scrap Section 21 eviction powers.

In the recent The Times’ story based on an apparent government leak, it suggested the S21 ban could be ‘shunted away’ as there were far more pressing matters for the government to contend with and was not deemed a priority.

At Clark’s question time on Tuesday 18th October, the Housing Secretary made various commitments from the private rental sector reform to help tenants which included a “very close review” of Local Housing Allowance’s rates to ‘mirror’ real market rents.

Teresa May’s government in April 2019 pledged to protect private tenants with the forthcoming Renters Reform Bill which was described then as a “step change” which included the scrapping of S21 eviction power, giving tenants more rights, apparently it would also help landlords as well (?).

It was heralded as “the biggest change to the private rental sector for a generation” which has undergone several delays with the onset of Covid and the Ukraine War amongst other priorities, causing a lack of parliamentary time and mindset on the matter.

Experts in the PRS firmly believe that many of the Bill’s provisions could take up to two years to pass through the parliamentary process which could mean that the Tory government will have to ‘juggle balls’ to introduce them before the next election in late 2024.