Unruly Tenants
Landlords to be given more powers to evict unruly tenants
The UK Government has announced an action plan to crack down on anti-social behaviour giving more powers to the police to target perpetrators with swift and visible justice in England and Wales.
16 areas will be funded to support either new ‘hotspot’ police and enforcement patrols or trial a new ‘Immediate Justice’ scheme. A select few areas will trial both interventions and following the initial trailblazers, both schemes will be rolled out in 2024.
A new reporting tool will also be developed over the next twelve months to act as a digital one-stop shop where people can quickly and easily report incidents of anti-social behaviour.
Under the zero-tolerance approach, nitrous oxide or ‘laughing gas’ will also be banned. The drug is now the third most used among 16 to 24-year-olds in England and both the police and the public have repeatedly reported links between the use of the drug and nuisance or anti-social behaviour.
Renters’ Reform
The UK Government’s plan to reform the private rented sector outlines tougher enforcement on nuisance tenants, and Propertymark has long campaigned for striking the right balance between protecting tenants from unfair evictions whilst allowing landlords to take possession of their property in reasonable circumstances.
Faster grounds for possession
The Action plan highlights that sustained acts of intimidating or disruptive behaviour will not be tolerated and should lead to the eviction of the tenant involved. The UK Government will be changing laws and arming landlords with tools to ensure that anti-social tenants will face consequences including making the grounds for possession faster and easier to prove.
Other measures include:
- ensuring all private tenancy agreements include clauses specifically banning anti-social behaviour
- expand the discretionary eviction ground, to make anti-social behaviour easier to prove in court and speed up the process of evicting by exploring how to prioritise these cases in Possession Lists in the courts
- preventing short-term lets importing anti-social behaviour into communities, with a new registration scheme to give local authorities data to easily identify short-term lets to act against if a let proves problematic. A consultation on the registration scheme will be published shortly
Clarity for letting agents and landlords needed
Whilst Propertymark is pleased that the UK Government is responding to our calls for better enforcement of anti-social behaviour, we need to see clarity on how the measures will work in practice and when the new legislation will be in effect, until then landlords will continue to struggle to evict nuisance tenants.
