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Generation Rent presses Ministers to increase notice period to four months

Baroness Kennedy tells Radio 4 listeners that tenants need more time to move home, particularly if they have children in a local school.

Nigel Lewis

evictions alicia kennedy

A leading tenants’ rights campaigner has used a national radio appearance to call on the Government to set a minimum notice period for rental contracts of four months.

Baroness Kennedy (pictured), who is the public face of controversial lobbying group Generation Rent, made the comments yesterday during an interview on Radio 4.

Asked to comment on the Government’s ‘Fairer Private Rented Sector’ White Paper debuted in parliament by housing minister Eddie Hughes which itself contains several radical proposals to reform the private rental sector, Kennedy went much further.

She said the organisation was asking Ministers to set the minimum notice period to four months “because we recognise that there are thre million children living in private rented sector so [if you’re given notice] you have to move schools and usually you don’t want to move in term time”.

“People who are given notice need time to get their life together, organise their circumstances and get the money together to afford a move,” she added.

Winter evictions ban

Kennedy also said Generation Rent would be pressing for evictions to be banned during the winter months, as is the case in several European countries including France.

Renters currently have to be given two months’ notice in most circumstances and the White Paper seems to suggest they will stick to this, but Generation Rent has been successful along with Shelter and Plaid Cymru in persuading the Welsh government to increase its notice period to six months permanently after the pandemic.

In the White Paper, the government says it will increase the notice period for the existing rent arrears eviction ground to four weeks and will retain the mandatory threshold at two months’ arrears at time of serving notice and hearing.

“This will make sure that tenants have a reasonable opportunity to pay off arrears without losing their home,” says Michael Gove.

June 17, 2022

3 comments

  1. So if they recognise that we are housing 3 million kids, any sensible common sense human being would say
    Ooh we best treat these landlords good as they housing 3 million kids. Cause if we keep giving landlord more expensive charges and punitive rules, we putting them 3 million kids at risk.

  2. The more stupid rules, the less landlords, the higher the rent. Genius that. It will end up “generation homeless” if they carry on, or live in a gov owned communist looking block of uniform flats.

    If they incentivised landlords, more would enter the market and have to compete with higher quality homes at less rent!

  3. It comes as no surprise a biased, woke BBC radio station are using Generation Rent to poke the Government on an issue of notice that has already been settled by the abolition of s21.

    The real story is the cost of living crisis that hasnt yet fully hit and the lack of affordable housing. When/if it does hit hard the government doesnt want to have to deal with the consequences of landlord’s trying to save their skin. Renter’s have to have roofs over their heads and that will be at the cost/shared by landlords.

    A socially just cause but realistically private landlords weren’t encouraged into the market by offers of being good social landlords it was by Return on Investment. If that goes so does the private landlord and the ‘model’ of private housing they have provided for decades. What replaces that either Michael Gove is keeping close to his chest or their is nothing – i think i know which one i would bet on.

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