Government data challenges its own eviction claims

This article is good but would be much more impactful if all figures were represented as a percentage of overall prs rental properties. Ie as a percentage of the 5.6m rental properties in the PRS and showing what percentage had actual issues.

Interesting rental arrears have gone down. I wonder how much is related to landlords taking a stance in removing non payers then strengthening vetting in the hope of preventing likely non payers from.securing tenancies?

Re the point “ Nearly one in 10 private renters said they had been refused a property because they had pets, something the Act now restricts to reasonable grounds only”. I feel this is misleading as it seems to imply the right to have a pet is applies to the apply for a rental process which as I understand it (and have researched this) it is not the case. Once a tenancy has commenced a tenant has a right to ask to keep a pet which a Landlord cannot unreasonably refuse BUT a landlord is still able to market a house as no pets and refuse to let to someone with a pet.

I note that nobody has ever asked us landlords why we took decisions to end tenancies. Apart from being incredibly biased, it is methodologically really poor.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of landlords have ever evicted anyone and what percentage of their tenants have been evicted during their time as a landlord.
Also how many of us have served Section 21 notices with the intention of enabling tenants to retain their tenancy.

I’ve been a landlord for around 30 years and currently house 54 people. I have around 20 tenant changeovers every year, almost all in student houses or HMOs.

I asked one tenant to leave a few years ago because she kept forgetting to lock the front door in an HMO which caused anxiety to her housemates.
I served Section 21 notices 3 or 4 times to a tenant when he got into financial difficulties, so he could get a breathing space from lower priority creditors. This enabled him to clear his arrears and retain his tenancy until he chose to move in with his girlfriend.

I had to serve 3 Section 21s in April to 3 ex students in a student house as I have a group of students signed up for September.

That’s it in nearly 30 years. Four tenants out of over 600. Well under 1%. None of them have required a court hearing.

Have I been incredibly lucky or is this experience typical?

Reply to the comment left by Paul Smith at 10/07/2026 – 07:02
Labour celebrated the ending of no-fault evictions and the Labour Renters Rights Act with great joy. It is interesting that the published data don’t back up their claims of a big problem….there wasn’t a big problem with no fault evictions…no fault evictions were used rarely and provided a solution to antisocial behaviour. But there IS a problem with availability of housing.

The Labour Renters Rights Act is inflationary, it makes some tenants too risky to house, and it makes some properties too risky to let.

Portugal just launched reforms to liberalise the rental market and speed evictions:

https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/portugal-launches-reform-liberalise-rental-market-speed/

The report claims “…The government estimates that more than 250,000 empty homes remain off the market due to what it describes as “deep legal uncertainty” that discourages owners from renting them out….Portugal faces one of Europe’s worst housing crises, with new-lease rents almost doubling since 2017, becoming unaffordable for many Portuguese.”

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 10/07/2026 – 15:57
It wasn’t just Labour. It was the Conservatives too.

Reply to the comment left by Simon Kinzley at 10/07/2026 – 16:04
George Osborne (conservative) introduced changes stopping landlords from offsetting their finance costs against rents; this was inflationary, although didn’t really bite until interest rates went up.

The SNP introduced rent controls in Scotland, and drove rents up for all new lets.

The conservatives started out with the rental reform bill which started out as a project that was supposed to have some reciprocity in it and in terms of its radicalism fell a long way short of the Labour Renters Rights Act. And because Labour had a majority during the final discussions of the bill, when the Labour Renters Rights Act came out it had some additional measures in it that are inflationary, increase costs without any real benefit to most tenants, make some tenants too high risk to house and some properties too risky to rent out.

When governments interfere in markets they don’t necessarily make things better.

Portugal just found that out (again).

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 10/07/2026 – 16:33
Proving (as if we needed proof) that “No situation is so bad that government intervention cannot make it worse”
G. R. Steele
16 June 2011

Reply to the comment left by The_Maluka at 10/07/2026 – 17:39
Socialist governments like to control markets but no government ever produced a reliable car or a phone you could trust. When governments over-interfere in markets and drive out competition they don’t necessarily make things better for consumers.

I agree with government proposals to reform right-to-buy of council houses…but I don’t automatically believe that giving councils money to build council houses is the only or even the best answer. I don’t know how good councils are at doing it. It also isn’t clear to me who is best at housing the greatest number of families for a given amount of resource…maybe it’s not a council…maybe it’s a a housing association, some other charity, or perhaps a private company.

I used to take social housing tenants but I haven’t done it for years and that’s because government made them too high risk. It is government that makes it risky to house people and it is government that is driving rents up.

The Labour Renters Rights Act will drive up rents. I can’t see the justification for what they did in the data.