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Keir Starmer’s announcement couldn’t have been more upbeat: “For too long, families have lived with the constant fear of eviction,” he said on April 30. “Today we are putting that right. We promised to fix a broken rental system and we’re delivering.”
The Renters’ Rights Act came into force at midnight that night, ending fixed-term contracts in favour of rolling tenancies, limiting rent increases to once a year, banning rental bidding wars, giving tenants the right to request a pet and abolishing the widely hated Section 21 “no-fault” evictions once and for all. Except the door wasn’t entirely closed, and many people are still being forced out.
In Bermondsey, south London, corporate landlord BMR Group beat the deadline for serving Section 21 notices by just three and a half hours, notifying 50 households in St James estate they had two months to get out. Freshview, which manages the estate for BMR, later said some could stay, but only if they accepted a new tenancy agreement and hefty rent increases of up to £600 per month. Freshview told the BBC that rents were previously “substantially below” market value, adding that Section 21 notices were served “as a safeguard”.
Thirty-two households decided to fight the landlord’s new tenancy terms and overstayed their eviction notice, which expired in June. This week, residents were notified via their MP that Freshview has instigated legal possession proceedings against 30 households. It is a mass eviction still in progress. They can’t be the only ones.
Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook had anticipated landlord possessions over the next few months would not rise, based on government statistics that showed a 12% decrease in Section 21-related landlord possessions in January to March 2026 compared to the previous year – a pattern of decline visible across two years. Yet, new data reveals a sharp reversal that undercuts such confidence.
The most recent Ministry of Justice statistics show that landlord possession claims increased by 6% between April and June 2026 compared with the previous year. Section 21-related accelerated possession claims are up 16% on the previous year. This data only covers a portion of the new Act’s transition period, but the rise seems to reinforce the pre-deadline-rush warning flags raised by charities in the spring.
St James residents are not yet a data point in the new release – court papers filed in the month before the July 30 cutoff will not be published until November. But invisibility in the statistics does not mean invisibility in the courts. And they face a system already under massive pressure: court-to-bailiff timelines for outstanding Section 21s are currently taking around six months. For other eviction grounds, it can take as long as a year.
Delays buy tenants time, but in the new Renters’ Rights era, they face fewer options and higher rents on the other side of an eviction. Bermondsey has, like everywhere else, an acute shortage of affordable private rentals and social housing. The council, Southwark, has one of the highest rates of families and vulnerable people in temporary accommodation in London. Nearly 6% of children there live in temporary accommodation.
Anxious not to end up homeless, residents have referred their rent rises to the tribunal. Four rulings have so far been published. Rent rises granted were not always to the full extent requested, but still ranged from 9% to 43%. Freshview told the BBC that tribunal decisions had confirmed their rent increases reflected market value – an outcome that doesn’t improve the tenants’ security.
Critically, it’s an outcome activists predicted. Renters Reform Coalition and More in Common revealed in polling last year that 34% of renters could be forced out by a rent increase of £110 per month even after the Act passed. They also found rent tribunals raised appealed rents by an average of 22%. Such sharp hikes are simply evictions by the back door.
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner seems to view the Renters’ Rights Act as job done, ruling out rent caps and stating the Act is “already having a significant impact on the market”. But rent inflation has merely been slowing over the past 20 months, and is still on the up, while rental supply continues to decline, squeezing options for the evicted.
Legal aid can prevent or delay evictions, yet provision has decreased – 41% of England and Wales do not have a housing legal aid provider in their local authority. The Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman – the Act’s new dispute resolution service for tenants – won’t go live until 2028.
The government has sleepwalked into a structural eviction crisis. Ultimately, the answer is, of course, much more public housing, but genuinely affordable, too.
This is not new insight. Keir Starmer realised it, yet fell short of the pace required to meet his 1.5 million new houses commitment. Starmer’s successor, Andy Burnham, promises more. In his leadership bid, Burnham pledged “the biggest council house building programme” since the end of World War II – though without firm numbers. If delivered (against high construction costs and planning bottlenecks), it would diversify tenure options and, with social rent averaging 50% of local market rates, help drive down private rent costs. But construction is not enough to meet need – he must end the loss of public housing to the market through terminating Right to Buy.
Burnham also holds a “housing first philosophy” – the view that unconditional access to a secure home can end homelessness. On his first day as prime minister he committed to ending rough sleeping through housing provision and intensive support, backed by £340 million funding. On Tuesday, he increased that to £442 million, pledging “new accommodation” and “practical help with housing”. But bricks and mortar won’t go far without settling rent costs and, just four days later, he dropped consideration of rent controls without offering an alternative antidote to unaffordable rents today.
Burnham’s broader ambition to move towards a “preventative state” – intervening before things reach a crisis point – is the right one. But the real crisis point isn’t rough sleeping. For renters like the St James community, it was the rent hikes and eviction notices served months before that. Change has to come fast; they don’t have time to wait.
Jessica Field is a historian and the author of ‘Eviction: A Social History of Rent’, published by Verso next month.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo UK.
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