\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen 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 \u00a3775 to \u00a3900. She took her case to a rent tribunal \u2013 only to be served with a no-fault eviction notice.<\/p>\n No-fault eviction notices \u2013 officially known as section 21 evictions \u2013 mean private landlords can oust tenants who have done nothing wrong. Even though the tribunal agreed that the proposed increase on Ladyman\u2019s Exeter home was too steep \u2013 setting it instead at \u00a3825 a month \u2013 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 rights bill is still progressing through parliament and will become law too late for tenants like Ladyman.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just such a shock,\u201d she said. \u201cI had just been made redundant, and I was thinking, at least I\u2019ve got my flat, at least I\u2019ve got my stability. I\u2019ve 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 \u00a375?<\/p>\n \u201cEven though I\u2019m renting, it\u2019s my home. My life revolves around it. I\u2019m really involved in the local community. But anything I was involved in socially, I\u2019ve just given it up. You can\u2019t think of anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Sarah Ladyman: \u2018I\u2019ve never defaulted on my rent. I just feel so victimised.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Karen Robinson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n 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\u2019s three-bedroom house in Leicestershire, which they rented for \u00a3900 a month. She recalled sitting on her bed making party bags for her five-year-old daughter\u2019s birthday when the leg collapsed, creating a hole in the floor. Alice, 33, thinks she could have been the victim of a \u201crevenge eviction\u201d \u2013 when a landlord decides it is easier to evict tenants than carry out requested repairs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe absolutely loved the house,\u201d Alice said. \u201cWe 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\u2019t get done, or the landlord\u2019s husband and his mate would come round and do a terrible job.\u201d<\/p>\n When Alice said she planned to contact her local council, she was given a section 21 notice, sending her into a \u201ctotal panic\u201d. After a \u201cmad scramble\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cTemporary accommodation would have ripped us apart,\u201d she said. \u201cBut if it wasn\u2019t for help from my mum, we would have ended up there.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u00a3900 a month.<\/p>\n \u201cIt came completely out of the blue,\u201d Ryan, a 31-year-old university lecturer, said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n With the help of the renters\u2019 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.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI live with depression, anxiety and OCD,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been managing these things quite well until recently. I\u2019ve had a drop in my mental health to the point where I am struggling mentally and emotionally. My partner has been as well.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been a lot of tears. We\u2019ve lived here for four years and always paid rent on time but it\u2019s not our home any more. It\u2019s not somewhere we look forward to coming back to after a long day. We\u2019re really lucky that we\u2019ve had friends and family offer us a place to stay for a bit. As lovely as that is, we don\u2019t want to sofa surf.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a real conflict of interest here because a lot of MPs and people in the House of Lords are landlords themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not saying this is the only reason it\u2019s been held up, but there is that vested interest. I think that\u2019s partly why it\u2019s going slower.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Labour set out was unrealistic from the get go. You can\u2019t just say, \u2018We\u2019ll outlaw this on day one\u2019. There\u2019s a process to be followed. I feel that what has been sold to us by successive governments has been false promises.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u00a3775 to \u00a3900. She took her case to a rent tribunal \u2013 only to be served with a no-fault eviction notice. No-fault eviction notices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1023,311,14819,14818,7706,2682,3440,8393,8670],"class_list":{"0":"post-24384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-effect","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-evictions","11":"tag-nofault","12":"tag-panic","13":"tag-property","14":"tag-renters","15":"tag-renting","16":"tag-total"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}