When Sarah Ladyman was made redundant from her job as a horticulturist earlier this year, her one-bedroom flat was her sanctuary. Then, her landlord attempted to raise her monthly rent from £775 to £900. She took her case to a rent tribunal – only to be served with a no-fault eviction notice.
No-fault eviction notices – officially known as section 21 evictions – mean private landlords can oust tenants who have done nothing wrong. Even though the tribunal agreed that the proposed increase on Ladyman’s Exeter home was too steep – setting it instead at £825 a month – she is virtually powerless in her attempt to halt the eviction process and lives with the gnawing fear that her home of three years will be seized by bailiffs.
Ladyman, 52, is one of more than 30,000 people in England who have received a no-fault eviction notice since July last year, when Labour was elected on a manifesto that promised to ban them immediately. Yet its flagship renters’ rights bill is still progressing through parliament and will become law too late for tenants like Ladyman.
“It was just such a shock,” she said. “I had just been made redundant, and I was thinking, at least I’ve got my flat, at least I’ve got my stability. I’ve never defaulted on my rent. I just feel so victimised. Why would the landlord want to go to court to get rid of a good tenant for the sake of £75?
“Even though I’m renting, it’s my home. My life revolves around it. I’m really involved in the local community. But anything I was involved in socially, I’ve just given it up. You can’t think of anything else.”
Sarah Ladyman: ‘I’ve never defaulted on my rent. I just feel so victimised.’ Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Guardian
For Alice, a married mother of two who asked not to give her surname, the notice came after she flagged a series of safety issues at the family’s three-bedroom house in Leicestershire, which they rented for £900 a month. She recalled sitting on her bed making party bags for her five-year-old daughter’s birthday when the leg collapsed, creating a hole in the floor. Alice, 33, thinks she could have been the victim of a “revenge eviction” – when a landlord decides it is easier to evict tenants than carry out requested repairs.
“We absolutely loved the house,” Alice said. “We did a lot of work to it. We made the garden look absolutely beautiful but we had a constant problem of big jobs that needed done. Things either didn’t get done, or the landlord’s husband and his mate would come round and do a terrible job.”
When Alice said she planned to contact her local council, she was given a section 21 notice, sending her into a “total panic”. After a “mad scramble”, and with the prospect of temporary accommodation looming, she felt forced to accept a more expensive private let because she was so worried about the impact homelessness would have on her children, particularly her 12-year-old autistic son.
“Temporary accommodation would have ripped us apart,” she said. “But if it wasn’t for help from my mum, we would have ended up there.”
Ryan Bramley and his partner, Sophie Hodgkiss, received a no-fault eviction notice a week after they raised the issue of leaks in the guttering at their three-bedroom terrace house in Sheffield, for which they pay £900 a month.
“It came completely out of the blue,” Ryan, a 31-year-old university lecturer, said. “The week prior to getting the section 21, I messaged my landlord to say there was an issue with the guttering. It could be completely coincidental but until that point we had no reason to believe that a section 21 was coming.”
With the help of the renters’ union Acorn, Ryan and Sophie, also 31, asked for an extension but their pleas were ignored. They now live surrounded by boxes, anticipating that they will soon be forced to leave by bailiffs.
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Ryan said the couple received the notice when Sophie was in the final weeks of a mental health nursing degree, adding to her stress. He said it had also exacerbated his pre-existing mental health issues, as they contemplate either sofa surfing or asking the council to place them in temporary accommodation.
“I live with depression, anxiety and OCD,” he said. “I’ve been managing these things quite well until recently. I’ve had a drop in my mental health to the point where I am struggling mentally and emotionally. My partner has been as well.
“There have been a lot of tears. We’ve lived here for four years and always paid rent on time but it’s not our home any more. It’s not somewhere we look forward to coming back to after a long day. We’re really lucky that we’ve had friends and family offer us a place to stay for a bit. As lovely as that is, we don’t want to sofa surf.”
Ryan thinks successive governments have made false promises to tenants. A no-fault eviction ban was first mooted by the Conservatives in 2019, but several attempts to change the law have faltered.
“There is a real conflict of interest here because a lot of MPs and people in the House of Lords are landlords themselves,” he said. “I’m not saying this is the only reason it’s been held up, but there is that vested interest. I think that’s partly why it’s going slower.
“What Labour set out was unrealistic from the get go. You can’t just say, ‘We’ll outlaw this on day one’. There’s a process to be followed. I feel that what has been sold to us by successive governments has been false promises.”
