Landlord Assist supports plans to tackle anti-social tenants

For social landlords, evicting nuisance tenants can become a long and costly procedure through the court system, often taking months to receive a possession order.

But under new proposals by the Housing Minister, authorities will be able to take into account previous convictions for anti-social behaviour and evict persistent offenders more quickly.

Shapps also proposes a series of ‘trigger offences’ that can be taken into account if a tenant behaves in an anti-social manner. These are likely to include a conviction for an offence related to housing including violence against neighbours, drug dealing and criminal damage.

Graham Kinnear, Managing Director at Landlord Assist says:

“At Landlord Assist we have seen a significant increase in the number of landlords complaining about the anti-social behaviour of their tenants and disillusioned about the costs and length of the process involved in terms of getting the tenants removed.

“We’ve always thought it to be wrong that under the current system landlords have to wait a substantial amount of time to remove offending tenants whilst they themselves are able to remain in the property. Whilst evicting tenants should always be the last resort for landlords we fully support any measures that help to speed up the process in cases of repeated anti-social behaviour.”

Stephen Parry, Commercial Director at Landlord Assist also backs the new plans.

He says:

“When you consider that in the social sector alone the courts issue over 3000 eviction orders every year for cases of anti-social behaviour it is evident that this problem needs to be addressed.

“No landlord or neighbour should have to put with the misery caused by nuisance tenants and for that reason we fully support the new proposals.”

The changes are due to be introduced in a Home Office Bill over the next 12 months.