Government data shows that there were 11,400 no fault evictions involving bailiffs in England in the year from July 2024 since the Labour Party were elected to government.

Labour was elected on the manifesto pledge: “We will immediately abolish Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions, prevent private renters being exploited and discriminated against, empower them to challenge unreasonable rent increases.”

Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 gives a landlord the right to evict a tenant without providing a reason (a no fault eviction). The tenant then has a two-month notice period before they must leave. Most renters move out of the property before the two-month notice period is up, wanting to avoid ending up in court. This suggests that the overall repossession statistics are an underestimation of those losing their homes as the government’s figures only include those who have lost their homes via the use of a bailiff in the eviction process.

Mortgage and landlord statistics published by the Ministry of Justice show that between July 2024-June 2025 there were 11,402 households that were evicted by bailiffs using the accelerated possession procedure (section 21) in England, an 8 percent rise compared to the previous year. From July 2023-June 2024, there were 10,576 households evicted by bailiffs.

Mairi MacRae, Director of Campaigns and Policy at the Shelter housing charity, commented that it was “unconscionable” that “renters continue to be marched out of their homes by bailiffs because of an unfair policy that the government said would be scrapped immediately”.

No fault evictions are one of the leading causes of homelessness in Britain. Since Labour first pledged to abolish section 21 notices back in 2019, landlords have brought 109,538 cases to court.

A year from Labour coming into office, its Renters’ Rights Bill (RRB) has still not passed through both chambers in the Houses of Parliament.

Shelter are calling on the government to pass the Bill as soon as possible and implement a date to prevent further evictions and provide extra protection for renters. It is estimated that for every month the ban on section 21 notices is delayed, up to 950 households could be evicted.

In September, parliament is scheduled to debate and approve the Bill before it can become law. The RRB if passed will include an outright ban on section 21 notices and further protections for tenants.

However, there have already been several revisions to the Bill during its passage through the House of Lords. Peers, many of them landlords, have slowed down and weakened key aspects of tenants’ rights within the Bill, voting through amendments that if upheld will weaken some of the rights of tenants.

The evidence bar enabling local authorities to be able to issue fines to landlords has been changed and a local authority would have to prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that a landlord had broken the rules before a fine could be issued. This would mean that important new rights included in the Bill—such as the protection of families with children and benefits recipients from discrimination—would be almost impossible to prove.

The period in which a landlord can say they need to evict a tenant to move into the property or sell, known as the re-letting period, was reduced from 12 to six months. The re-letting period was originally legislated to deter landlords from evicting a tenant to be able to put the rent up again afterwards—thus evicting tenants under false pretences so as to be able to find a new tenant or let the property at a higher rent.

The reduction from 12 to six months considerably weakens the deterrent and puts the system at risk of still being abused by landlords, meaning many people face being unfairly evicted.

Another concession will allow landlords to ask all new tenants with pets to have to pay eight weeks deposit on top of the first month’s rent up front—making it difficult for those with pets to find anywhere to live.

Real material and class interest are represented in the determination of MPs and peers to massively restrict the RRB. A Financial Times analysis of the 2024 intake of MPs noted that “MPs must declare if they have a rental property that generates more than £10,000 a year in annual income. There are 85 MPs who declare themselves as landlords under this definition—representing 13 percent of parliamentarians — and they own 184 rental properties between them. Labour has 44 such landlords, equating to 11 percent of its 404 MPs, while the Tory party has 28 — a quarter of its 121 MPs. The Liberal Democrats have eight among their 72 MPs.”

Analysis of the register of interests for the House of Lords by the Renters Reform Coalition (RRC), representing private tenants, showed that at least 14 of the 144 peers who spoke at the Bill’s second reading are landlords of properties in England which would have been affected by the new legislation.

The RRC noted that across the House of Lords there are 134 peers who are landlords, owning at least 626 properties in England—equivalent to one in six peers in the upper chamber who would be affected by the Bill.

The actual number of properties owned by landlord peers is likely to be significantly higher as peers do not have to list the number of properties which pay rent to them. Many peers own rental homes through a trust and do not have to declare the number of properties in their register.

The Lord Benyon (Richard Henry Ronald Benyon, Baron Benyon)—a Conservative Party peer—does not declare rental properties on his register but is chair and director of Englefield Estate Trust Corporation which has at least 200 rented homes in Hackney (the Benyon Estate). The estate is estimated to receive £5 million a year in rental income.

The Starmer government, beholden to big business and the super-rich, cannot be entrusted to uphold rights of tenants at risk of homelessness. The scandal surrounding Labour MP Rushanara Ali—Labour’s Homelessness Minister—revealed everything about the grubby, pro-business, anti-working class nature of the party.

Ali had to resign earlier this month following revelations that she evicted four tenants from her east London townhouse in November 2024. The tenants were informed their fixed-term lease would not be renewed because the property was being put up for sale. Shortly after the tenants vacated the property, it was relisted for rent at £4,000 per month, a £700 increase from the previous rent of £3,300. Such nefarious practice was what Ali was ostensibly seeking to outlaw under the Renters’ Rights Bill!

Ali had developed the closest connections to the main business players in the housing sector. In 2024 survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire called for Ali to stand down her duties, managing building safety as part of the government’s response to the inferno which killed 72 people.

This followed the Times newspaper highlighting her attendance in Paris in January 2024 at the Franco-British Colloque—a conference bringing together business leaders, senior politicians and civil servants. The meeting was co-chaired by Pierre-Andre de Chalender had served as chairman of Saint-Gobain when it was a majority shareholder in the company Celotex at the time of the Grenfell fire. Celotex was one of the firms that manufactured the combustible insulation material inside the cladding on Grenfell Tower.

According to the register of MP’s interests, Ali was one of six MP’s who had attended the Colloque in Paris.