Tenant Eviction Rates Continue To Rise
70% rise in Tenant Evictions over 3 years
The Residential Landlords Association (RLA) and homless charity Crisis say that UK court orders to evict defaulting tenants in the Private Rental Sector have risen by more than 70% over the past 3 years.
Homeless charity Crisis analysed Ministry of Justice figures to reveal that within the last 12 months some 36,211 landlords have been granted a court order to evict bad tenants, an increase of 12% on the previous year and 70% higher than the 21,351 court orders granted in 2009.
Duncan Shrubsole, director of policy at Crisis, said: “Sadly it is no surprise that we are seeing thousands of private tenants facing eviction. They face a dreadful combination of high unemployment and underemployment, draconian cuts to housing benefit and soaring rents. Our concern is that many of these people will have nowhere to turn, and end up falling victim to homelessness. In fact the Government’s own statistics point to this already happening. We are calling on the Government to rethink cuts to housing benefit that will inevitably leave increasing numbers of people unable to pay the rent. We are also in desperate need of more social and affordable housing in order to rein in the soaring rental market.”
The RLA want more done to prevent tenants getting into rent arrears and are currently lobbying the Government to change the way that the housing element of the new Universal credit system will be paid.
Latest Government figures show that between 2009 and 2011, the number of people approaching their local authorities as homeless due to the end of an Assured Shorthold Tenancy or due to rent arrears increased by 42% to almost 10,000 households.
Sim Sekhon spokesman for the UK’s leading Tenant Eviction specialists, Legal 4 Landlords, said “Landlords who do not have specialist insurance in place to protect rental incomes face the prospect of rent default by tenants as they in turn face increasing financial pressures. At Legal 4 Landlords we provide the complete tenant evictions service for landlords with a success record that speaks for itself, that’s why we are the UK’s leading tenant eviction company”.
