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No-fault evictions will be banned by next election, Gove pledges
Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions will be banned by the next general election, Michael Gove has promised.
The housing secretary told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme on Sunday that “we will have outlawed” the policy by the election “and we will have put the money into the courts in order to ensure that they can enforce that”.
Mr Gove had previously told Conservative MPs that Section 21 evictions could not be scrapped until various court reforms took place.
Section 21 evictions allow landlords to evict tenants with two months’ notice and no reason given. The Conservative government promised to scrap no-fault evictions in its 2019 election manifesto. In May 2023, it published the Renters’ (Reform) Bill, which also committed to the policy.
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Mr Gove said: “It is the case that there are a small minority of unscrupulous landlords who use the threat of eviction either to jack up rents or to silence people who are complaining about the quality of their homes.”
The next general election must take place by the end of January 2025, and prime minister Rishi Sunak said last month it was his “working assumption” that the election would be held in the second half of 2024.
No date has been set for when the bill will return to the House of Commons for its third reading, but officials said it would happen “shortly”.
During his appearance on the programme, Mr Gove also said the number of people living in temporary accommodation was unacceptable. “We have introduced something called the local authority housing fund, which is money that central government gives to councils specifically to acquire new properties to help to deal with this challenge,” he said.
He added: “We are extending loans to housing associations… to ensure that there can be at least another 20,000 new social homes.”
Figures released last week by the Ministry of Justice showed that a total of 26,311 households have been removed from their homes since the government first promised to scrap no-fault evictions in 2019.
The number of people removed from their homes by court bailiffs because of Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions rose nearly 49% in 2023, while a further 30,230 landlords in England started Section 21 eviction court proceedings in 2023, a rise of 28% in one year.
Tom Darling, campaign manager at the Renters’ Reform Coalition, said: “We will hold the government to this commitment.”
He added: “We’ll also be making sure the government don’t give in to landlord attempts to gut the bill – if these evictions are banned in name only then the government won’t be getting a pat on the back from anyone.”
Angela Rayner, shadow housing secretary, said: “Having broken the justice system, the Tories are now using their own failure to indefinitely delay keeping their promises to renters in the most underhand way.”
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