Renters’ Rights Bill

Committee (1st Day) (Continued)

Clause 2: Abolition of assured shorthold tenancies

Amendment 14

14: Clause 2, page 2, line 30, leave out paragraph (a) Member’s explanatory statement This amendment would retain social landlords’ ability to apply for a demotion order in response to the anti-social behaviour of a tenant.

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 14, 66 and 67 standing in my name.

Anti-social behaviour is a scourge on our communities but is particularly devastating from a housing perspective. Quite often, anti-social behaviour replaces productive community spirit with fear and tension, leading to residents feeling trapped and helpless. Anti-social behaviour strips away the very essence of what makes a house a home.

The consequences of anti-social behaviour are often forgotten. The costs of repairing damage, the need to enhance and increase security measures, and the day-to-day administration involved in responding to complaints from neighbours all place a significant and often unsustainable financial strain on housing associations, local authorities and landlords across the country.

As drafted, the Bill reduces the powers available to local authorities and social housing landlords in cases where tenants are responsible for anti-social behaviour. Amendment 14, tabled in my name, seeks to preserve the ability of landlords to demote tenancies in response to such behaviour. Loud noise, vandalism and intimidation leave residents helpless, and local authorities must have the power to uphold community stability without the detriment of demotion. How can the Government ensure that there are consequences for this ruinous behaviour?

Amendment 66, tabled in my name, probes the Government’s objectives in creating a duty on the court to consider any co-operation on the part of the tenant against whom an order is sought. On these Benches we wish to understand the real-world impact of this change. I ask the Minister: what constitutes co-operation? Is it replying to an email or answering a call, or does it require a tenant to display a serious and notable change in their behaviour? Is this simply a requirement for engagement or would there be a requirement to take practical steps to prevent anti-social behaviour in the future?

Finally, I will speak to Amendment 67, tabled in my name. This amendment probes the Government’s reasoning for applying consideration of the past impact of behaviour in cases involving shared HMO accommodation, but not the continuing impact nor the future effects of repeated behaviour. We believe that this amendment offers a straightforward improvement to the drafting of the Bill. The same consideration of impact against other persons under the 1988 Act should surely apply equally to those sharing HMO accommodations or facilities. From these Benches we struggle to understand why the Government have chosen to apply only subsection (2)(a), on the past impact of behaviour, in this instance. Does the Minister agree that the ongoing impact of behaviour really matters? This may be well be an honest drafting oversight, but we believe that the Government should apply the whole of subsection (2) here. As I have already noted today, the legislation is technical and detailed, and so where we believe we can help to amend for accuracy, I hope to constructively put such amendments forward for debate.

Anti-social behaviour is a scourge on our communities, and landlords should have access to tougher powers to tackle it. Those with experience in local government will be well aware that when a tenant engages in anti-social behaviour, it is the landlord who faces enforcement action from the council. It follows, therefore, that the landlord must be equipped with the necessary powers to respond effectively. I ask the Minister: have the Government thought this through?

The impact of anti-social behaviour, past, present and future, should be considered in its capacity to destroy community trust and increase costs. The Home Secretary has spoken strongly in the other place about tackling anti-social behaviour. This Bill should align with the Government’s rhetoric and address its effects head on. Anti-social behaviour is ruinous to people’s lives. When a person returns home at the end of a long day, they should feel safe. When we remove the deterrent of demotion, we risk sending a dangerous message that disruptive and harmful behaviour carries no real consequence. In doing so, we fail both those suffering its impact and those who might otherwise be guided back to a more responsible path. I beg to move.

My Lords—

My Lords—

My Lords, I support Amendment 14, tabled by my noble friends Lady Scott of Bybrook and Lord Jamieson. Local authorities have a duty to ensure fairness for their social housing tenants, and I believe the steps taken in the Bill to restrict local authorities and housing associations in their use of demotion orders are wrong and unnecessary.

The reality is that a small minority of tenants cause misery to other tenants through anti-social behaviour. A report from Nottingham Trent University in 2018 suggested that 30% of social housing tenants are more likely to come across anti-social behaviour, crime and drug dealing. Likewise, a social housing residents’ survey report from 2022 found that 26% had been impacted by anti-social behaviour.

Local authorities and housing associations are already severely restricted in the action they can take against the small minority of tenants who cause misery for other tenants who are law-abiding and play by the rules. Withdrawing the ability for local authorities and housing associations to issue demotion orders will severely diminish their ability to combat anti-social behaviour. As far as I am aware, the Government do not even collect data on the number of demotion orders that are issued each year to social housing tenants, so one has to question how big an issue this really is at present. I hope that the Government will accept Amendment 14, given that it is an instrument used by housing associations as the treatment of last resort.

I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness earlier; she was on my blind side. She mentioned those of us who have been involved in local government. Well, I had the pleasure, I would say, of being in a beacon council under the Blair Government when the now noble Baroness, Lady Casey, was actually doing all the work with the then Labour Government on anti-social behaviour. We recognised that it was a serious issue on many of our estates—and a deeply challenging one at that. I would argue that councils are not necessarily restricted in what they can do, but it is very challenging. It is difficult, and we often found that the courts were very sympathetic to tenants while we were sitting there going, “But you don’t have to live next door to them”.

Very often, another issue that occurred was that neighbours, after months of ongoing, low-level, constant nuisance, retaliated in some way. Such incidents were then reduced to being 50/50, when in actual fact you had only to speak to the people around the neighbourhood to know that that was not the case. These things are difficult to prove and difficult to get evidence on. People do not always write the dates down—“Oh, please keep a diary”—you know. Sometimes, even that is quite difficult for people. This is an area, Minister, where we would like to explore more what the route is for proving and what the bar is, what the level is, that has to be satisfied.

I must admit that I did not read into the Bill that it was that much of a restriction or a difficulty, but perhaps I have missed something. The National Housing Federation certainly has not listed it as one of its key concerns. That, in itself, perhaps tells me how much of an issue it is, but I would support the noble Baroness if that proved to be the case. As I say, I know from very bitter experience just how difficult this area is, and it is most likely to be the one that would come up most in certain areas.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for her amendments relating to anti-social behaviour, and I agree with her powerful statement on ASB. As a councillor, I saw at first hand, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Eaton, did, the utter misery that is caused to individuals and communities through the irresponsible actions of others and I properly understand why it is important that we have provisions to tackle it.

Amendment 14 seeks to reintroduce social landlords’ ability to apply for a demotion order in response to the anti-social behaviour of a tenant. This amendment seeks to enable landlords to demote social tenants to a less secure form of tenancy because of anti-social behaviour. However, the amendment as drafted would not work; the Renters’ Rights Bill will move tenants to a simpler tenancy structure where assured shorthold tenancies and the ability to evict shorthold tenants via Section 21 are abolished. There will therefore no longer be a tenancy with lower security to demote tenants to. To work, it would require a reversal of measures in the Bill to remove demoted tenancies and assured shorthold tenancies; that is the issue with the amendment as drafted.

I reassure the noble Baroness that tackling anti-social behaviour is a top priority for our Government and a key part of our safer streets mission. The Bill will shorten the notice period for the existing mandatory eviction ground, with landlords being able to make a claim to the court immediately in cases of anti-social behaviour. In addition, the Bill amends the matters that judges must consider when deciding whether to award possession under the discretionary ground. This will ensure that judges give particular regard to whether tenants have engaged with efforts to resolve their behaviour and the impact on other tenants within HMOs.

My Lords, first of all, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton and Lady Thornhill, and the Minister. All are from local government and understand anti-social behaviour over many years and the effect it can have. We on these Benches recognise that what is often described as anti- social behaviour may indeed be a symptom of much deeper, complex personal struggles. Those underlying issues, of course, deserve serious compassionate attention. So it is important that the Government are looking at the issues surrounding anti-social behaviour. I am particularly interested—I do not need an answer tonight —in bolstering the capabilities of support services within local government, to ensure that intervention can give people a real chance to turn things around before they get to the stage of being evicted.