Activists in the Generation Rent campaign are complaining that the Renters Reform Bill hasn’t been placed ahead of other Parliamentary business on the House of Commons agenda.
The group believes that the Second Reading of the Bill in the Commons cannot now happen until at least after the political party conferences - and there are only two days of Commons business now until MPs break up for the conference season.
Asked about the Bill at yesterday’s routine Commons Business Statement session, the leader of the house - Penny Mordaunt - reiterated the government’s commitment to the Bill and pledged that dates for progress on its passage into law would be announced in future business.
However that’s not enough for Ben Twomey, the new chief executive of Generation Rent, who has written to Housing Secretary Michael Gove to urge him to hold the Second Reading debate as soon as Parliament returns from its conference recess.
Even when MPs return after the conferences there is only a brief period when the Commons sits before the King’s Speech, outlining future business, on November 7.
Generation Rent uses protracted maths and extrapolations to claim that since the Bill received its First Reading on May 17, there have been 10,633 households facing Section 21 eviction notices.
The campaigners reach that conclusion by saying that in Q2 2023, there were 7,491 accelerated claims in England, 35 per cent higher than the same quarter in 2022. The Bill was published on 17 May 2023 and Generation Rent says that in the 44 days of that quarter “we estimate that there were 3,839 claims.”
The group continues: “In Q3 2022, there were 6,092 accelerated claims. If these have increased at the same rate as the previous quarter, we can expect 8,224 claims in Q3 2023, and as of 14 September, we estimate this to be 6,794 claims in the 76 days of the current quarter to date.”
The government first committed to abolishing Section 21 in April 2019.
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