On Sunday 14 February, the Housing Secretary
Robert Jenrick announced that the ban on bailiff evictions due to
come to an end on 22 February has been extended for another 6 weeks
- until 31 March 2021, with measures to continue to be kept under
review in line with the latest public health advice.
Exemptions remain in place for the most
serious circumstances that cause the greatest strain on landlords
as well as other residents and neighbours, such as illegal
occupation, anti-social behaviour and arrears of 6 months' rent or
more.
The requirement for landlords to give 6-month
notice periods to tenants before starting possession proceedings,
except in the most serious circumstances, remains in force meaning
that most renters now served notice will be able to stay in their
homes until at least August 2021, to provide them with time to
reach agreement to repay the arrears or to find alternative support
or accommodation.
Full detail of the Government's announcement
is available on the Government website.
ARCH Chief Executive John Bibby comments:
"Whilst many tenants who have lost their jobs or faced
significant drop in their household incomes since the start of the
pandemic and are struggling to pay their rent will welcome the
extension of the eviction ban, the concern is that they will
struggle to ever pay off the arrears accrued in this
period.
Simply continuing to extend the ban on evictionswithout
addressing the underlying accrued arrears/debt problems is rather
like building a dam wall ever higher to hold back the stream of
arrears cases, but when that dam wall is removed councils are
likely to see an inevitable rise in homeless applications over the
next 12-24 months when the ban is lifted and cases find their way
to court.
Research published this week by the Resolution Foundation seems to
underscore those concerns with close to one-quarter of private
renters seeing their earnings fall during the last ten months
andover 750,000 families behind with their housing payments in
January 2021 - 300,000 of which contained dependent
children".