In an eye catching statement the housing charity Shelter has said that new research that they have carried out shows that a section 21 eviction notice is served on a tenant every 7 minutes (no reason need be given by a landlord for serving this type of notice which gives the tenant 2 months to vacate their home if the notice is correctly served by the landlord). In addition, the charity says that, over the last 3 years, 230,000 such notices were served even taking into account the 14 month long eviction ban in place during the pandemic.

Pointing out that losing a private tenancy is the 2nd biggest cause of homelessness in England and that a quarter of all private renters have had (an extraordinary) 3 or more private rented homes in the last 5 years, Shelter urged the Government to make good on its plan to scrap the section 21 notice. Polly Neate, Shelter's CEO, said "To give private renters stability during a time of deep uncertainty, the government must introduce a renters' reform bill that band no-fault evictions this year."

However, whilst some argue that the charity is "scaremongering", many local authority housing advisers and tenancy relations officers will know that the big problem isn't so much that a section 21 notice is "no fault" but that it is the default. Yes, it is the case that many unscrupulous landlords will use the notice amorally (as opposed to illegally) but the other side of the coin is that many other landlords will use it simply because it is simpler and more straightforward than a section 8 notice where the landlord must give a reason for the eviction and a court hearing to determine the validity of that reason is likely.

A section 8 notice means the compilation of evidence such as police incident reports and records of complaints from neighbours or council nuisance teams (in anti-social behaviour cases) or statements of account, written correspondence records and agreed payment plans not kept to (rent arrears cases). Plus, a landlord has to sort through the different notice periods relevant to a section 8 notice. For a non professional landlord (still the majority) the section 8 notice procedure can, literally, be a nightmare unless the landlord has insurance that covers legal costs, uses a good managing agent or has professionalised themselves via quality landlord training. At the end of the day perhaps the argument should just be that the s 21 notice should be banned because it is not fit for purpose for the rental market in 2022. That should be something that all sides in this debate could agree on. Shelter's research is useful - but the figures in total are potentially skewed - whilst there will always be amoral actors (such as the landlord in Shelter's case study) in any industry sector, many good landlords simply work, by default, with what is available to them and will take the path of least resistance (s.21) in difficult cases (which should be s.8).