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Landlord News
June 3, 2014 | Landlord News
It has been announced at a housing conference in London that the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is considering introducing legislation to protect tenants from ‘retaliatory’ eviction – where a landlord evicts a tenant for complaining about their housing conditions.
The DCLG says they receive more than a thousand reports of such incidents every year from the Citizens Advice Bureau. They told the conference that they are committed to cracking down on rogue landlords and improving conditions for tenants.
Speculating on what may be done, the DCLG suggested they could block landlords from Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 if the property contained health-threatening hazards, an approach adopted in Australia and New Zealand. It was also suggested that it could be possible to extend rent recovery orders to landlords who illegally evict tenants or let hazardous properties.
Simon Gordon, consultant to the Residential Landlords Association, warned that Section 21 is of vital importance to landlords, saying, “The government should be very careful about touching that.”