The bill is designed to eliminate retaliatory evictions – where landlords turf tenants out rather than maintain their property to an adequate standard, for example by evicting tenants who ask for essential repairs.
Gillian Guy, Citizens Advice chief executive, said: “Protection from eviction is good news for four million UK households. In the past year Citizens Advice helped with 38% more eviction problems in cases where people were up to date on their rent.
“Although rent arrears is a common problem, the biggest cause of homelessness for private renters is the landlord ending their contract, rather than because tenants have fallen behind on their bills.
“Preventing landlords from turfing people out of their homes simply for asking for essential property repairs is a matter of basic fairness and is long overdue.
“Citizens Advice has long campaigned for greater protections for tenants and it’s welcome news that government has given its support to this legislation.”
Reaction to the proposal has been mixed, as previously the Residential Landlords Association slammed the bill.
Alan Ward, RLA chairman, said: “Revenge evictions should not have any place in a today’s rental market and we would condemn strongly any landlord caught doing it.
“However, by backing a measure to tackle the minority of criminal landlords, Ministers will be penalising the vast majority of good landlords by making it ever easier for nightmare tenants to hold up eviction proceedings and continue causing misery for communities.”
