NLA hits back at new charity eviction claims

The National Landlords Association has hit back at a claim by the Citizens Advice Bureaux organisation that it has seen a 38 per cent increase in cases of private sector tenants without rent arrears being threatened with eviction.

NLA chief executive Richard Lambert says the rise reported by the CAB - and like that of Shelter in recent months - is confounded by government figures which show only nine per cent of tenancies are ended by the landlord and more than 90 per cent of those are because of rent arrears.

CAB says there were just over 5,000 cases coming to, or being referred to, its bureaux for help in 2013/14, up from 3,750 the year before.

Problems in London and south east England were particularly acute. Bureaux in the region dealt with 900 problems caused by people being evicted without having run up arrears in January to March 2014, compared to 400 issues during the same period in 2013.

The tenants complained of the threat of eviction either because they asked their landlord to conduct repairs - so-called revenge evictions' - or because landlords wanted to sell.

Others are allegedly given notice when they inform landlords of a change in circumstances or they have moved on to housing benefit, even if they have not fallen behind with rent.

The CAB also claims an increase in tenants accusing landlords of unfairly keeping deposits (although recent figures from deposit organisations show this is actually a very small problem) or landlords refusing to carry out repairs or harassing tenants.

Over the past year, June 2013 to May 2014, 150,000 people sought advice on renting from a private landlord on the CAB website, a 13 per cent increase on the year before.

Gillian Guy, CAB chief executive, says tenants are being treated as cash cows because in the current market they are easy to replace if they are evicted. This is exacerbated by rising rents and insecure tenancies she claims.

Similar claims by other organisations have in the past been treated with sharp denials from landlords' groups.