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Whatever Shelter says, Landlords insist private sector evictions falling.
The proportion of private sector tenants evicted by their landlord or letting agent has fallen over the past year says the Residential Landlords Association.
According to the most recent English Housing Survey for 2012/13, just seven per cent of tenants who had moved in the last three years said that it was because they had been asked to leave by their landlord or agent. This compares with nine per cent in 2011/12.
Research by the RLA, which represents 20,000 landlords, shows that the vast majority of such evictions happen for legitimate reasons. These include landlords wanting to sell or move into the property, needing to perform extensive work on it or because tenants aren’t paying their rent or are committing anti-social behaviour.
The association claims the figures expose Shelter’s campaign today as “irresponsible scaremongering which can only serve to unnecessarily frighten tenants” according topolicy director Richard Jones.
“The official figures show quite clearly a fall in the number of tenants having their tenancies terminated and by far most of these are for perfectly good reasons. Shelter’s campaign on so called revenge evictions is totally inaccurate and irresponsible” claims Jones.
“To severely restrict landlords’ right to regain possession as Shelter advocates would severely damage confidence in the sector. This would reduce supply at a time of high demand causing more people to be homeless and we thought Shelter is all about reducing the number of homeless” he says.
Jones claims this is one of a number of statistics put out by the charity which are highly questionable.”
