Anti-social tenants face council house ban
Housing Secretary to give landlords power to remove residents after three warnings on bad behaviour
ANTI-SOCIAL tenants will be evicted and banned from applying for council housing for five years under tough proposals to be unveiled this week.
Social landlords will be allowed to get rid of tenants after three warnings for anti-social behaviour such as playing loud music. The tenants will then be banned from reapplying for two years, under plans to be unveiled by Michael Gove, the Housing Secretary, this week.
People with unspent convictions and anti-social behaviour orders could also be blocked.
A government source said: “It’s not right to have people who make their neighbours’ lives a misery staying in social homes while deserving families are stuck on waiting lists.”
The proposal was first floated in an “anti-social behaviour action plan” published last October. It said: “Landlords and law-abiding tenants will benefit from stronger laws and systems to ensure those who are persistently disruptive are evicted.
“We will seek to halve the delay between a private landlord serving notice for anti-social behaviour and eviction and broaden the disruptive and harmful activities that can lead to eviction. We will also provide a clear expectation that previous anti-social behaviour offenders are deprioritised for social housing.”
Mr Gove will launch a consultation on the scheme this week. Ministers say it will focus on giving social housing to those who need it and contribute most to the country. This includes putting British families at the top of a waiting list for social housing to try to prioritise “British homes for British workers”.
Tenants will have to show they have had links to the UK for a decade and the local area for two years. The consultation will also consider blocking people who earn above a certain salary from renting social housing.
Official figures show that 90 per cent of the lead tenants in social housing are British. However, in the London borough of Brent, 40 per cent of new social homes were let to foreigners in 2021-22.
It is not yet clear how the law will be written and how it will be enforced. The plans echo changes made by Gordon Brown in the dying days of his government to allow housing providers to choose between two households of equivalent need to take into account how long they have lived in the area.
The consultation will also look at how to give people born in the UK priority for council homes.
Mr Brown’s changes allowed housing providers choosing between two households of equivalent need to take into account how long they have lived in the area. But the Conservative proposals, first trailed last summer, are understood to go much further.
Under current rules, authorities are meant to decide social housing allocation based on need, giving priority to those who are homeless or living in overcrowded or squalid conditions.
Refugees are allowed to claim social housing, but anyone not entitled to benefits is not, meaning most foreigners in the UK are excluded. One option is to discriminate on the basis of nationality, but such a move is likely to fall foul of equalities law. A more plausible change would be to bar refugees from gaining access to social housing.