Imagine watching £15,000 disappear from your bank account, month by month, while the person responsible sleeps soundly in your property and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. For a growing number of British landlords, that’s not a hypothetical. It’s Tuesday.
Landlords across England are speaking out about the agonising reality of trying to evict tenants who’ve stopped paying rent, as the government prepares to abolish Section 21 “no-fault” evictions under the Renters’ Rights Bill. The legislation is designed to protect tenants from sudden, unexplained removal. But some landlords say it’s already tipping the balance too far in the wrong direction.
One landlord, speaking to BBC News, described being owed £15,000 in arrears by a tenant who has remained in the property for over a year while the legal process grinds forward at a glacial pace.
“I can’t pay my mortgage without that rental income. I’ve done everything right, and I’m the one being punished,”
they said.
The core problem is time. Even under existing rules, a possession case can take six to twelve months to resolve through the courts, and that’s if nothing goes wrong. Add in a backlogged county court system and the occasional adjournment, and some landlords are waiting the better part of two years before they can reclaim their property.
Supporters of the Renters’ Rights Bill are quick to point out that the current system allows landlords to evict tenants for no stated reason, leaving renters in precarious, short-term arrangements that make it nearly impossible to put down roots. Around 11 million people in England rent privately, and campaigners argue their need for stability is just as urgent.
Both sides have a point. The problem isn’t really the legislation itself; it’s the infrastructure meant to support it. A tenant tribunal system that took on 29,000 cases last year simply isn’t equipped to handle the volume a post-Section 21 world will bring.
The government has promised a specialist housing court to speed things up. Whether it materialises before the Bill becomes law is, frankly, anyone’s guess.
If it doesn’t, landlords owed thousands in arrears may find themselves waiting even longer, and renters in genuinely difficult circumstances could end up living under the threat of an increasingly frustrated landlord with nowhere to turn. Neither outcome is what anyone voted for.
