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TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Shock bid to block evictions to be made this week in House of Lords

A Liberal Democrat Baroness says she is to make a last-ditch bid in the House of Lords tomorrow to stop evictions going ahead following the end of the ban.

Lib Dem Olly Grender will use a procedural motion known as a Prayer To Annul in the Lords to try to block evictions. 

This little-known and little-used procedure could force a vote on the government’s wider Coronavirus measures.

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Baroness Grender hopes such a move will galvanise opposition to evictions: a Labour peer, justice spokesperson Lord Ponsonby of Shulbredeh, has himself tabled a so-called Regret Motion against the end of the ban.

Baroness Grender has told the Mirror newspaper: “This government made a promise that no renter who has lost income due to COVID would lose their home, yet ... tens of thousands are facing that very real threat.

“Rather than scrapping no-fault evictions as promised in the election, Tory ministers are enabling evictions of an estimated 55,000 private renters.  

"People who have been furloughed, made redundant, have children going to a local school are all under threat. If this goes ahead countless families will find themselves without a home, on this government's watch, in the midst of a pandemic.”

The Grender measure, if approved, will effectively force the government's hand on the Renters’ Rights Bill, which already pledges to abolish S21 notices, reform the repossession process, create a ‘lifetime rental deposit’ and widen access to the so-called rogue landlords and rogue agents database.

However housing minister Christopher Pincher recently indicated that it may well be 2021 before the Bill is introduced into the House of Commons for debate; the Grender measure, if successful, will escalate that process.

In response the government says: “We’ve taken unprecedented action to support renters by banning evictions for six months, preventing people getting into financial hardship and helping businesses to pay salaries.

"To help keep people in their homes over the winter months, we’ve changed the law to increase notice periods to six months and introduced a ‘winter truce’ on the enforcement of evictions for the first time.

“In addition, we have put in place a welfare safety net of nearly £9.3 billion and increased Local Housing Allowance rates to cover the lowest 30 per cent of market rents.”

  • jeremy clarke

    The key words are due to covid. Most who have lost income have been eligible for support, they just need to reassess their spending. Those who were in arrears before or who have landlords that need the property back, those antisocial tenants must face the courts and landlords must be able to take back their own property.

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    • 22 September 2020 08:48 AM

    Hear hear Jeremy.
    Quite right.
    LL do not need to be forced for more free accommodation for the feckless.

     
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    Liberal Undemocrat peer. The very definition of a waste of space, not to mention taxpayers’s money.

  • James B

    Chasing votes again. Self serving parasites

     G romit

    Sadly peers do not need votes, otherwise she'd be out on her ear.

     
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    • Mr P
    • 22 September 2020 07:59 AM

    What about the property owners who are now in mortgage arrears because of tenants using these ‘no eviction’ measures to their advantage and not paying rent irrespective of whether they are, employed, furloughed or have lost their jobs. The landlords who could also have been furloughed or lost their jobs and who will now be struggling to pay their investment & home mortgages! A 3 month mortgage holiday is all you get which you pay back by extending your mortgage term by another 3 months. No mention of support for landlords. Businesses can still be made bankrupt, properties sold by receivers, The Government ewe it’s states
    The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has said that mortgage lenders must not start or continue court action for repossession until at least 31 October 2020.

    If your lender applied to court before the coronavirus outbreak your case should still be on hold.
    So no extension for mortgages just tenants? I though this country was supposed to support and encourage entrepreneurs!

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    You are under the illusion that this is a Conservative Government.

     
  • Angus Shield

    There needs to be a process where tenants have proved beyond reasonable doubt that their CV-19 financial circumstances have caused them not to meet any of their rent obligation.
    Any tenant responding to a S21/Form 6 needs to be defending it with banking records, payment slips, etc and let the Court consider the matter. If they had been in receipt of furlough payments then they could have met an 80% (or whatever the payment amount was) rent payment.
    I have stated before that other lenders (utilities, personal contract hire, etc), simply chuck missed payments at aggressive recovery agencies whilst Landlords must 'stand in the que' with the courts; it’s ridiculous!
    Maybe ‘Nightingale’ housing courts are not such a bad idea to process the applications quickly thus reducing any further accumulation of rent arrears whilst the main courts catch-up. Also if there was a possession action in-train prior to lock-down, it should still be heard.
    Where has people’s sense of priority gone; home comes before shiny car, now phone, etc!

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    “Lib Dem Olly Grender will use a procedural motion known as a Prayer To Annul in the Lords to try to block evictions.”

    Wonder 🤔 if any of the realist, fair & sensible Lords who is in touch with reality of being a small business as a landlord & knows Peoples requirements can/should use a procedural Prayer to Annul Lib Dem Olly Gender & all her future motions in the House of Lords.

    Lib Dem’s are certainly not getting my and other millions of people’s vote whose future pensions & homes are tied up with rental income for survival-and I’m not even a Landlord!
    Lib Dem’s are just another Marxist party favouring unscrupulous tenants instead of supporting good honest landlords.

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    • 22 September 2020 10:46 AM

    It would appear that the politicians have no care about the 2 million LL and their viability.
    They seem to have supreme faith that LL will continue subsidising feckless tenants with their own resources.

    Many LL may have little alternative as they couldn't afford to sell as many have CG on which they could not afford the CGT bills.

    So to avoid crystalising CG they MUST keep the property going come what may.
    A most invidious position to be in!

    I'm sure many LL are having to use up reserves to subsidise these feckless tenants and they will never recover them.
    What happens if LL run out of reserves!?

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    Liberal Democrats - Mmm seem to have a history of always being on the wrong side of an argument

  •  G romit

    Our well informed Baroness (sic!) is quoting a figure of 55,000 given by Generation Rent as figure rubbished by MHCLG being based the input of 13 responses.
    Why do our politicians hang on every word, as gospel truth, that are uttered by any tenant supporting charity or pressure group?

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    Was just about to write what Gromit was saying. There is no ‘55,000’ tenants. Generation Rent have falsely concocted this based on no representative sample at all. Just 13 - thirteen! - responses to their survey has morphed into 55,000, a figure even MHCLG have publicly criticised them for. Yet these morons in charge suck it up and quickly regurgitate the figure without ever demonstrating the slightest ACTUAL knowledge of the sector! And they make the policy decisions?! Sickening.

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