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Good afternoon and welcome to this week’s The State We’re In. The decision taken by America and Israel to strike Iran will have major ramifications for the UK. Not least because there are thought to be over 100,000 UK nationals in the Middle East and because Iran has started targeting oil and gas production, which, as you might imagine, has sent prices spiraling.
But, for now, let’s turn our attention to something more directly domestic: the Renters’ Rights Act.
Coming up in this week’s newsletter:
Are landlords really about to be forced to pay thousands of pounds to evict people? (Spoiler: no). What are the potential problems with Labour’s Renters’ Rights Act? Why it’s too soon to say house prices are going up this yearOn 1 May, this historic piece of legislation will come into force. It will be the biggest shake-up of power dynamics between landlords and their tenants since the 1988 Housing Act deliberately stripped renters of rights in an attempt to make it more attractive for private landlords to invest in housing in Britain.
In a sense, the 1988 legislation brought in under Margaret Thatcher was a bit too successful.
Since the 80s, Britain’s private rented sector has exploded, and there are now more people (around 4.4 million in England alone) living in a home rented from a private landlord than there are living in social housing (around 4.2 million).
It is for this reason, the fact that so many people rely on private landlords to keep a roof over their heads and those of their families, that the Renters’ Rights Act is so needed.
One of the biggest changes being ushered in by the Act is the end of Section 21 “no fault” evictions. For years, Section 21 has been a leading cause of homelessness. It allows landlords to evict tenants quickly – with no more than two months’ notice – without ever having to give them a reason. The Tories pledged to ban it as long ago as 2017, but never managed to get legislation over the line, and Labour has taken up where they left off.
And so, from May, landlords in England will only be able to evict tenants via something called a Section 8 notice. Unlike Section 21, Section 8 requires very specific legal grounds for a landlord to serve an eviction notice. These include:
Being behind on rent (rent arrears) Antisocial behaviour The landlord needs to sell the rented home The landlord wants to move back into the homeAs you might expect, not all landlords are happy about these changes. A quick scroll of TikTok, Instagram or Twitter reveals landlords talking about how it will now be too difficult or expensive to evict “problem” tenants.
That’s just not true. Section 8 already exists. The cost of serving a Section 21 notice should be no more than £200-£300. Costs will only escalate (potentially to between £1,000 and £3,000 maximum) if a tenant refuses to leave, the landlord has to apply to court for a possession order and, if necessary, a warrant for bailiffs.
Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time in county courts, sitting in on eviction hearings. It’s rare that a case ever escalates like this and, and when it does happen, it is generally resolved swiftly. Section 8 does not automatically result in a court hearing; that only happens in the most extreme and unfortunate circumstances.
The removal of Section 21 may see an uptick in Section 8 evictions, particularly in the short-term. But, it’s simply not true that all landlords are now going to find themselves in court, paying for solicitors to fight Section 8 cases.
The reality is that little is actually changing for landlords – there are simply stricter criteria and longer notice periods for evictions.
In any case, spare a thought for private renters. According to the housing charity, Shelter, the cost of an unwanted and unplanned move after an eviction can be as much as £1,245 by the time they’ve paid moving costs, paying a deposit on a new home, bills and taking time off work to view properties.
There has been a lot of scaremongering about the Renters’ Rights Act, and landlords arguing that their costs are suddenly going to rise is just the latest example.
Last year, landlords were warning that the Act would cause a “surge” in Section 21 evictions as some decided to evict renters while they could and, potentially, sell up.
In 2025, there was indeed a rise in the number of Section 21 evictions recorded. Government data released shows that 11,400 households in England were removed from their homes by bailiffs as a result of a Section 21 no-fault eviction between July 2024 and June 2025. That’s an 8 per cent rise on the previous year.
However, we don’t yet have data for 2025/2026, so it’s too soon to say whether that’s still going on.
37-year-old James Coleman emailed me this week. He has been renting his family’s home from a private landlord in Crawley for 9 years. His children are 11 and 7 years old. Last month, they received a Section 21 eviction notice out of the blue. They pay £1,500 a month for a three-bedroom home.
“We were very upset,” James told me.
Over Christmas, James says his landlord did “some long overdue maintenance” work and “increased the rent”. But, James says, his landlord was clear that he “wasn’t interested in selling the property”, so “the eviction was a shock and came with no explanation”.
The impact of this abrupt and sudden change on James’ family has been profound. “My wife was very depressed afterwards,” he says. “And the landlord refuses to discuss the situation with me”.
James is self-employed, so he’s not currently in a position to buy a home, and he and his wife want to stay near their children’s school. This makes finding another rental property nearby the only realistic option.
“The new [rental reform] laws are long overdue,” James says. “However, I think there will be landlords behaving like mine, so there needs to be something to help people like us who are becoming victims of landlords’ ‘cashing out’ because they don’t want to comply with the new rules.”
There are certainly questions to be asked of the Government’s new legislation. For instance, will courts – which are currently bottlenecked and backlogged – be properly resourced to deal with new eviction cases? And, will the new tribunal, where renters can challenge rent increases, also be well-resourced and accessible? Only time will tell.
No reform is ever perfect. On balance, Labour have legislated to improve the lives of millions of renters who, since the 1980s, have not had proper protections and, as a result, have been condemned to live in unstable housing.
Do you have a story about evictions? I’d love to hear from you [email protected]
Housing crisis watch
According to major mortgage lender Nationwide, UK house prices increased in February. The average price of a home rose to £273,176 last month, up by 0.3% from the month before. This matched January’s monthly increase and was above analysts’ forecasts of a 0.2 per cent gain.
This is just one dataset from one lender, so it doesn’t yet tell us a huge amount about what’s going to happen this year,
However, so far, it suggests that Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement is having a far less negative impact on the housing market than last November’s Budget, which saw people pause on buying and selling.
What I’ve been watching, reading etc.
Last Tuesday, I was lucky enough to attend the opening of the painter Rose Wylie’s show at the Royal Academy (RA). Somewhat unbelievably, she is the first British woman to have a major retrospective like this at the RA. Wylie’s paintings are alive with characters from cinema, pop music and pop culture. She also started her career as a painter in her fifties, which is very inspiring. I spotted her at the opening; she’s now 92 and still making waves. I went to see Charli XCX’s mockumentary The Moment in the cinema. I still don’t know what I think about it, but I do think it’s refreshing to see celebrities play around with ideas in an ironic and subversive way as opposed to taking themselves too seriously to take risks. Not a problem, Charli has. The film was co-written by my old friend Bertie Brandes, who used to run a hilarious spoof women’s magazine called The Mushpit, which is worth googling. And, finally, I am reading a book called The Tyranny of Merit by Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel. He argues that Western Society is so focused on the idea that success is achieved via talent and hard work that it justifies inequality by implying people who don’t “make it” simply are not worthy. Food for thought.Hence then, the article about landlords are moaning about 300 eviction fees look what it costs renters was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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