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Government demolishes “misleading” Generation Rent eviction claim

The government has accused campaign group Generation Rent of peddling “unreliable and misleading” figures about potential evictions in the private rental sector.

Generation Rent has for some days been suggesting that 55,000 households had been served an eviction notice during the eviction ban period.

It repeated the claim on Twitter only for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to launch an attack on the claim.

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On Twitter the MHCLG responded to the incorrect data, saying: “These figures are unreliable and misleading – @GenRentUK have looked at the responses of 13 individuals to conclude 55,000 households have been served an eviction notice. The official statistics show only 3,022 private and social sector landlords applied to the courts for possession of their property between April and June, down 89 per cent on the same time last year.

“We've taken action to protect renters including a ban on evictions for the last six months and introduced six month notice periods - so anyone served notice won’t have to leave their home over winter, except in the most serious cases such as anti-social behaviour and domestic abuse. In addition guidance has been issued to bailiffs not to enforce evictions in areas of local lockdown or over Christmas.

“For those renters who require additional support, there is also £180m of extra support for Discretionary Housing Payments so councils can support renters to pay off arrears or downsize.

“We will keep these measures under constant review and our decisions will continue to be guided by the latest public health advice.”

After the lengthy MHCLG tweets Generation Rent did not dispute the 13 figure and instead responded by posting: “This is the best data we know of on the caseload the courts are starting to deal with. What are your estimates of the number who will fail to benefit from the new six month notice period? You’ll soon have much better data – when will you be publishing it?”

  • James B

    Shows them for what they are .. hopefully government remember this ... probably wishful thinking as the quest for renter votes goes on

  • jeremy clarke

    At last, common sense may be prevailing. For too long these facist mobs have been spreading spurious claims and have never been held to account.

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    It would be nice to think that govenment now realises the fakery of GR, Shelter, CA etc, but in the real world they wll still listen to them because they think, misguidedly, that there are more potential votes for them that way.

    The blind fools cannot believe that feckless tenants will never vote Tory. Once they could have guaranteed the Landlords' votes. I doubt that is still true after their attack on the PRS over the last few months.

  • James B

    If anyone questions such figures on their Facebook they delete the posts. Proper low life spinning lies

  • Kristjan Byfield

    Interesting that they are willing and able to dispel GR's claims when it is targetted directly at them- but when it's directed at Landlords and/or Letting Agents they are silent. GR, Shelter et al are very good at undertaking small polls and then extrapolating those as national statistics- without ever mentioning the pool size. What is more, they love to call servicing a S21 an eviction- which we all know it is not, it is a formality to end a tenancy- but the language around evictions is far more emotive. Misleading is an understatement.

  • Matthew Payne

    You don't go to BoJos house for drinks with his 12 Etonian pals and then publish the following day that the Tories are going to win a 600 seat majority in the next election, in your recent poll. There are minimum credibility standards on polling, hence all reliable pollsters like You Gov for example quote the sample size, selection criteria and margin of error. On 2000 respondents, the margin of error is 2%. On a sample of 13, the MOA is so extraordinarily large, that statistically it is unrecogniseable as meaningful data, especially when you consider the demography of people GR come into contact with, so not even a survey either. You don't have to be a pollster to know this, so further demostrates that GR deliberately used unreliable and inconclusive data in an attempt to mislead their audience.

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    One for their Twitter echo chamber #Genrentlies

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