The Renters’ Rights Bill has been progressing steadily through parliament, passing through the report stage and 3^rd reading on the 14^th of January this year. It has now gone through to the House of Lords, where it passed through the 1^st reading; the 2^nd reading is now scheduled for the 4^th of February 2025. Some of the key changes are largely limited to the private sector, some of these key changes are:

• New proposal to cap advance rental payments to one month’s rent. This is aimed in limiting upfront costs for tenants. This is grounded in previous attempts to limit upfront costs, such as the Tenant Fees Act 2019, which banned administration fees.
• Increasing the length at which a fixed term tenancy can take effect outside of the Bill from the seven years originally proposed to 21 years. This is ultimately, an anti-avoidance measure, seeking to address concerns that landlords might try to avoid granting assured tenancies by granting fixed term leases for just over seven years but subject to an earlier break right.
• Removal of the liability of a guarantor after the tenant’s death. The Government describes this a ‘safeguarding bereaved families.
• Extension of Rent Repayment Orders to a superior landlord. Aimed at ‘closing potential loopholes’

The private rental market, therefore, has seen large changes because of these amendments. With the pace of the passing of this piece of legislation, it seems likely this will likely become law in the first half of this year.

The Social Housing Sector

However, it is important to raise that the issues facing social housing have seldom been scrutinised, and many in the sector continue to raise questions and fears with the passage of this bill.

A wide range of changes is set to come to the social housing sector following the passage of the Renter’s Rights Bill, namely the abolition of ‘starter’ tenancies. We contacted Forbes Solicitors to comment on these recent changes to the sector. Lachlan McLean, Partner at Forbes Solicitors, shared the following statement:

 “In truth, the abolition of “Starter” tenancies will not be hugely missed by the sector.  In our experience, they have rarely been used successfully since the passing of the Equality Act 2010 and the Supreme Court’s decision in Manchester City Council v Pinnock, both of which have made it relatively easy to raise at least an arguable proportionality defence in many cases and at least prolong the possession proceedings.  Even so, it is interesting to note that the Ministry of Communities, Housing and Local Government has no proposals to abolish the equivalent Introductory tenancies for local authorities.  The reason for the difference of treatment between private registered housing providers and council housing authorities isn’t entirely clear.

Of most impact will be the inability to use Section 21 in a vast array of genuine “no fault” scenarios, where possession is legitimately required for effective social housing stock management.  These must now be comprehensively and laboriously enacted into a series of highly specific new Grounds for possession, annotated with a bewildering range of “As”, “Bs” and “ZAs”.  One such example is the potential new Ground 6ZA, which was proposed by Angela Rayner in a recent Parliamentary debate and is designed to indirectly regulate the provision of alternative accommodation when tenants are decanted during redevelopment works.  It contains around 15 separate sub-criteria or defined expressions, which must all be met or made out for the Ground to be available.  Such an approach self-evidently risks becoming unwieldy to the point of being impractical, as messy legislation invariably leads to messy litigation.  The parliament.uk website indicates that this proposed amendment was not actually debated – as with several other elements of the Bill, it remains to be seen whether it makes it onto the statute books and in what form.”

Alongside a slew of new amendments to legislation, another further issue for many is the issue of the courts, that new legislation could impact upon. We have touched upon this issue in a previous insight piece.

Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, raising this issue stated: “Court readings is essential to the successful operation of the new system”

“That is why my officials, and I are working closely with the Minister for Courts and Legal Services and her team to ensure that the Courts and Tribunals Service is ready when the new tenancy system is brought into force.”

Of course, many are still anxious, the scale of the backlog faced by the court is truly astronomical, individuals in some areas, as reported last year, must wait for an average nearly 18 months between an incident occurring and a jury reaching a verdict.^[1]

Grounds, particularly for possession, have been contested at great length in the Commons. We only cast our eyes back, to remember measures proposed to amend other grounds for possession, such as ground 14, that were withdrawn after lengthy debate. Amendment 61 to ground 41, moved to lower the ground for anti-social behaviour possession from “likely” to “capable”. There were concerns around lowering the threshold to a point which could be dangerous, and therefore it was withdrawn.

There are also further minor calls for changes to the social housing sector, for instance, Dogs Trust, the UK’s largest dog welfare charity, is calling on the Government to extend proposed pet-friendly rental rights to include social housing tenants.^[2] Of course, the Renters’ Rights Bill does aim to provide rights for pet’s owners, however this is constrained to the private rental sector.

While there has been a great focus on the private rental sector with the Renters’ Rights Bill, we understand there are still great concerns among the social housing sector, and we are committed to ensuring there is a voice for those concerns.

Is there anything else that you are curious or cautious about with the upcoming advent of the Renters’ Rights Bill?

Is so please do not hesitate to send any questions or comments to:

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^[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmlddjv0eego

^[2] https://dogstodaymagazine.co.uk/2025/01/20/dogs-trust-calls-for-proposed-pet-friendly-policies-to-be-extended-to-social-housing-tenants/