When Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook said last week that his Renters’ Rights Act was a ‘momentous’ piece of legislation, everyone agreed.

The property industry has universally backed his reforming efforts, calling the Act ‘long overdue’ and a ‘sensible balancing’ of the power relationship between landlords and tenants.

But few have criticised the legislation, even though it will make both their own and their landlords’ working lives more difficult and most likely persuades fewer to invest in the sector.

I suspect this is for a good reason – letting agents think the Act will persuade more landlords to use them rather than self-managing given the new red tape being ushered in including signing up to a database, joining the new ombudsman, meeting (eventually) the new Decent Homes Standard and Awaab’s Law, vetting tenants much more carefully and so on.

But apart from eviction experts like Paul Shamplina, the property industry has gone quiet on the nightmare they and their landlords face when Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions are banned.

As one columnist in The Times put it yesterday, the power balance within the private rented sector has now swung wildly against landlords. And rogue tenants, of which there are a significant number, now have carte blanche to take their often unwitting landlords or agents for a ride.

Trash properties

Tenants who either regularly trash properties or deliberately play the system to avoid paying rent – or both – will now realise that by abolishing Section 21, the key counterweight to their activities has been removed.

Once this part of the Renters’ Rights Act goes live, landlords and letting agents will only be able to seek a court’s permission (via a hearing and subsequent warrant) to evict a tenant who refuses to move out and, official figures show, will have to wait six months for this process to finish on average (longer in some London courts) and shoulder the ensuing legal costs.

There is also the extra effort and cost required to gather the documentation to prove a tenant has behaved badly or got into serious arrears to put in front of the court, and that’s assuming the tenant doesn’t defend themselves and that there are bailiffs available to execute the warrant.

And let’s not forget that badly-behaved tenants who, other than losing their home, face no penalties for their actions; money orders are rarely enforced or sought by exhausted landlords and nor are CCJs, so there is no data trail for future landlords to pick up on when vetting.

It is unfortunate that the Government has framed its reforms as ‘rebalancing’ the power balance within the PRS as it implies all landlords have (and use) too much power when in reality, most don’t.

It would have been more helpful if Labour had presented the legislation as a ‘professionalisation’ coupled to measures that protect tenants from rogue and criminal operators while protecting landlords and letting agents from rogue tenants would have been fairer too.

But Labour is not interested in justice for landlords – and I fear the industry has a long uphill battle to find a solution to the evictions problem as it gets worse in the coming months.