The Work and Pensions commons select committee has launched an inquiry into ‘the local welfare safety net‘.

On behalf of HLPA, Giles Peaker filed written evidence  and will be giving oral evidence to the committee on 18 November 2013. Other written evidence, including that of Crisis, Shelter, LGA and London Local Authorities can be found here.

HLPA have prepared a briefing on issues in the clauses in the Immigration Bill that enable possession by the landlord either by ‘notice’ or a new mandatory ground of possession. The full briefing can be downloaded here and is set out below.

Clause 13
1. Cause 13 creates two new routes by which a landlord can recover possession.

2. The first is new s.33D, being inserted into the Immigration Act 2014. The Secretary of State will serve notice on the landlord, informing him that a person without a “right to rent” lives in the property (new s.33D(2)). The landlord is then given power to terminate the tenancy by giving at least 28 days written notice to the tenants (ss.33D(3)-(4)). The notice will be enforceable “as if it were an order of the High Court” (s.33D(6)). There will be no need to obtain an order for possession (indeed, the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 is expressly amended to make this point – new s.33E(4). The 2015 Act provisions will not apply here because the Bill makes clear that, once the notice is served, the tenancy cannot be an Assured or Assured Shorthold tenancy.).

3. We have the following concerns:
(a) There is no appeal mechanism for either the landlord or the tenant against the service of either notice. What happens if the Secretary of State has made an error? The only remedy that we can see would be for (i) the landlord to seek judicial review of the Secretary of State; or (ii) the tenant to seek an injunction (probably in the High Court) to prevent the landlord acting on his own notice. Both of these are likely to be expensive and, frankly, largely inaccessible to the majority of landlords and tenants.
(b) It is not at all clear what it means for a notice to be enforceable “as if it were an order of the High Court.” In particular, the landlord’s notice to his tenant seems intended to have the effect of terminating the underlying tenancy and removing all security of tenure. That would appear to suggest that the landlord can simply use “self-help” to recover possession, i.e. personally turn up and throw occupiers onto the street. There are clear risks in this, of potential violence and damage to property, for both landlord and tenant. If what the government intends is that a High Court Enforcement Officer must carry out the eviction, then that needs to be made clear.
(i) This second point is particularly important. If a possession order had been obtained and executed, even on an erroneous basis, there could be no question of the landlord having carried out an unlawful eviction or committing a trespass. But this is not a possession order, merely a power to enforce a notice. There is an obvious risk to landlords that, if it turns out either notice was erroneous, they could have committed a crime; a tort; and a breach of contract.
(c) There is no provision for rent repayment, whether as a condition of execution or at all. So, a tenant who has no right to rent could have paid rent in advance (whether monthly, yearly, etc) and, after only a matter of days/weeks, evicted pursuant to these notice provisions. The landlord is under no obligation to refund the rent for the “lost” period. There clearly should be such an obligation, akin to that which the Government has recently imposed on private sector landlords under assured shorthold tenancies in the Deregulation Act 2015.

4. The second is a new mandatory Ground for possession in both the Housing Act 1988 and the Rent Act 1977, again, triggered by a notice to the landlord from the Secretary of State.

5. Whilst we have various objections to mandatory grounds we recognise that if there has to be a new route to recovering possession, it is far preferable that it be through a court than simply as a result of the service of a notice by the landlord. This route would (probably) at least allow for the court to consider whether in fact someone did not have a right to rent and whether the notice from the Secretary of State was valid. However, it still suffers from the absence of any rent repayment mechanism.

6. The creation of a mandatory ground against a Rent Act tenant is remarkable. Save for a tiny number of residual categories, it has not been possible to create new Rent Act tenancies since January 1989. Yet this Bill envisages bringing possession proceedings against such tenants. Given that, in order to be a Rent Act tenant today, one would have to have been occupying the property as your only or principal home since pre-January 1989, there would be an obvious unfairness in recovering possession against someone who had only known that property as home for over 25 years. Indeed, one would have thought that such a person would have a very strong case for being allowed to remain in the UK in any event. Certainly, this was the view of the Residential Landlords Association when giving oral evidence to the Bill Committee: “First, it is generous of you to put in a provision to allow eviction of Rent Act tenants, but it is possibly not entirely necessary, as Rent Act tenants will have lived in the UK for so long that they are almost certainly entitled to stay here anyway, irrespective of how they entered the country.” http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmpublic/immigration/151020/pm/151020s01.htm

Clause 14
7. This contains the text of the two new mandatory grounds for possession, as to which, see above.

8, It also contains a new power (new s.10A, Housing Act 1988) to allow a court to transfer the tenancy from a person who has no right to rent into the name of someone who does. There are various problems with this proposal:
(a) it only arises if no other ground for possession is made out, so, in practice, it will be relatively easy to circumvent and we would prefer this restriction be removed;
(b) it makes no provision for a range of other landlord and tenant provisions to be similarly changed, e.g. suppose the disqualified tenant has paid a deposit, is that now transferred to the “new” tenant and, if so, how should the landlord and tenancy deposit scheme administrator respond (see Housing Act 2004 for the provisions on tenancy deposits);
(c) why has this provision not been extended to Rent Act tenants, so as to allow qualified occupiers to retain the tenancy in the same way?

Housing Law Practitioners Association
October 2015