Evictions on the rise as pandemic protection for tenants is scrapped
CITY COUNCIL HAS ONE OF HIGHEST RATES IN ENGLAND FOR BRINGING TENANTS TO COURT HEARINGS
IN the first three months after the national ban on evictions was lifted, Nottingham City Council had one of the highest rates in England of bringing tenants to possession hearings in court.
Possession hearings take place in county courts when landlords seek to evict tenants from their property. Fearing that the inevitable loss of tenants’ income as an immediate impact of Covid could lead to a sharp rise in homelessness, the Government suspended possession hearings in England and Wales from April to September 2020.
As lockdown measures were reversed, a ban on bailiff evictions was lifted in May 2021 in England and the following month in Wales.
Since the ban ended, courts have gradually been getting through vast backlogs in possession hearings.
In the first nationwide analysis of the pandemic’s impact on the rented sector, it can be revealed that in the first three months after the eviction ban was lifted, Nottingham City Council was the plaintiff in at least 44 possession hearings at the county court. This is around 20 percent of all possession hearings brought to the court in total, the rest brought by housing associations, private landlords and mortgage lenders.
The 44 hearings involving the city council amount to around one hearing for every 600 homes owned by the council. This rate is significantly greater than those of several other local authorities including Manchester (1 hearing for every 1,400 homes), Leicester (1 in 2,000), Birmingham (1 in 4,300) and Sheffield (1 in 6,500).
Responding to the findings, a spokesperson for Nottingham City Council told the Post that they largely resort to legal action only when tenants “consistently refuse” to engage. They added that cases were most often over anti-social behaviour and that “less than half were for rent arrears.
“If a tenant is in rent arrears which are becoming problematic, we always try to engage with them and offer support...similarly, we will always attempt resolution of anti-social behaviour issues before resorting to possession proceedings.”
The general health of social housing in Nottingham is under great pressure and the number of households on the council housing waiting list increased every year from 2014 to around 8,500 in 2020.
Meanwhile, the number of households in the city eligible for homeless support increased from less than 600 in 2018 to more than 700 in 2020. The figure for 2021 has already passed 650.
The Bureau also sent reporters to 30 of the busiest courts in England and Wales to monitor the outcomes of more than 500 possession hearings.
Of the 36 hearings observed in Nottingham, 25 were brought by social landlords, 14 of which were brought by the City Council. Private landlords brought eight hearings. The other 11 social landlords that brought cases were a combination of housing associations and smaller district councils in Nottinghamshire.
Of the 25 social housing tenants brought to court, 14 were served an outright eviction order, seven of which were tenants in council housing. Of the eight private rental tenants, six were evicted.
The vast majority of all cases nationally were brought over rent arrears which skyrocketed during the pandemic. For people in Nottingham’s council homes, the pandemic exacerbated an existing city-wide trend of worsening arrears, the total amount having increased every year since 2017 from just over £2.5m that year to more than £4m in September 2021. Currently, more than 8,000 of the city’s 25,000 council households are in arrears.
On average, rent arrears across all tenancies in the city were just below £5,500, about £1,000 below the national average. In some cases, however, arrears were as high as £28,000.
Many tenants’ arrears grew to unmanageable levels throughout the duration of the eviction ban, sometimes tripling.
Sally Denton, a solicitor from the Nottingham Law Centre, says that owing to “a massive shortage of housing”, people had no choice but to stay in homes that were suddenly unaffordable following the loss of income due to Covid.
In addition, it is incredibly difficult
At the height of the Covid pandemic the Government stopped eviction of tenants in rent arrears to prevent a huge rise in homelessness. But that protection was lifted in May and here, a special report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals the impact on tenants and landlords in Nottingham over the last few months...
Until we tackle these issues, rent arrears, evictions and homelessness will only grow.
for someone to apply for homeless support and re-housing until the court has ordered their eviction.
Shanay Mcfarlane, a single mother of three young children in Clifton, had already made a homeless person’s application but struggled to secure accommodation and storage until the eviction date was set. In the meantime, she had to stay in her house accumulating even greater rent arrears.
The bitter irony for many in Nottingham was that when their day in court finally came, it took judges an average of just six minutes to order their eviction.
After eight minutes in court, Ms Mcfarlane was told that she and her three children must leave their home. Hearing the detriment a rapid move could have on her anxiety and depression, and of the impact to her fouryear-old child, the judge agreed that the typical 14-day period before the bailiffs came would be “grossly inappropriate.” They were given the maximum period of 42 days to vacate the property.
Lucy Sheldon, a mother of two children, was also in exceptionally difficult circumstances. She had recently lost her husband and fell deep into rent arrears of more than £8,000.
It took the court just five minutes to order Sheldon and the children to leave their home within 21 days and to repay the arrears - plus legal costs of more than £2,000 - although the hearing was in part sped along by a premade agreement made by legal representatives prior to entering court.
The delay to possession hearings also hit landlords. Ms Mcfarlane’s
Nadia Whittome MP, pictured
landlord, who was sofa-surfing at the time, was one of very few choosing to represent themselves in court. She complained that the long ordeal had also impacted her own mental health.
A spokesperson from the National Residential Landlords’ Association said: “Landlords cannot be expected simply to shoulder the cost of rent arrears indefinitely.
“The Government needs to follow the examples set in Scotland and Wales and provide the modest financial support needed to help tenants pay off arrears built since lockdown measures started last March. The damage to their credit scores will preclude them from accessing new housing in the future.”
Campaigners say that rigidity in the benefits system made it fruitless in helping people escape arrears. Huge drops in income were not accompanied by sufficient increases to the existing cap on housing benefit, meaning many could no longer afford the home they were comfortably living in prior to the pandemic.
Similarly, universal credit cuts continued to apply to social housing tenants with spare bedrooms, many of whom suddenly found themselves unable to pay their rent. One woman, Ms Newton, of The Meadows, had experienced problems with universal credit payments and fell into rent arrears on her council house of around £2,400. Luckily, her duty solicitor was able to reach an agreement with the council that landed Ms Newton a suspended eviction order, allowing her to stay in the home provided she adhered to a £10 per fortnight repayment schedule.
Nadia Whittome, MP for Nottingham East, expressed concerns around benefits. She tells the Post that the “root causes of this housing crisis” must be addressed: “Spiralling rents, a lack of social housing and a benefits system that lets people fall through the cracks,” she said. “Until we tackle these issues, rent arrears, evictions and homelessness will only grow.”
At the lower end of the rent arrears scale, tenants in other parts of the country faced eviction for arrears as little as £292.
To that end, around a quarter of all hearings observed nationally were over arrears of less than £3,000, or approximately three months of the UK average rent.
At least two months of unpaid rent constitutes ‘mandatory grounds’ for possession, and in such cases district judges must order an eviction without using their discretion. As early as May 2020, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee warned that unless legislation was amended to give judges more discretion there would be a “cliff edge” of evictions once the ban was lifted.
But the committee’s warnings triggered little action from the Government and shortly after the ban was lifted, the Bureau can confirm that 63 percent of all hearings observed were brought on such mandatory grounds.
Nick Ballard, head organiser of renters union ACORN, says the legal system “does not have the adequate level of flexibility to make fair judgments” on cases where more than two months’ arrears are solely caused by Covid.
Darren Hayder was one of few tenants to attend their hearing. He was brought to court as he was not entitled to stay in his council house following the deaths of both his parents.
He fell into huge arrears of around £10,000, but it was agreed between his duty solicitor and the council’s legal representative that he would only have to repay £4,000.
Many tenants fail to attend court because they think it is a “foregone conclusion” or can’t deal with the stress, Ms Denton says, but she urges attendance with free legal aid will often make their situation “considerably better.”