CABs condemn 'draconian' eviction threats

Welfare campaigners today appealed to housing associations and councils to stop threatening tenants with eviction over late payment of rent.

In a new study Citizens Advice, the umbrella organisation for citizens advice bureaux, found that progress has been made in its campaign against draconian approaches to rent arrears.

It reported that the number of home possession actions taken out by social landlords fell by 10 percentage points last year to 136,000. It also highlighted a number of examples of good practice where landlords have helped to resolve tenant debt problems without resorting to the courts.

But it warned that threats of eviction were still too common, even in cases where arrears were caused by delays in the administration of housing benefit. The study reported that the number of possession orders granted last year fell by only two percentage points to 30,000.

In one tragic case, a 35-year-old Derbyshire mother was found to have hanged herself when bailiffs arrived to evict her from her home after she fell behind with rent payments.

Launching the report, Citizens Advice social policy officer, Liz Phelps, said: "Where social landlords build into their rent recovery procedures effective protocols with key players such as housing benefit departments and independent advice providers before initiating possession action, then the need for court action can be significantly reduced."

She added: "The challenge now is to ensure that all social landlords adopt such practices."

The report found that despite Citizen Advice's two-year campaign housing associations are still using tough so called "ground eight" possession powers, which allow them to apply for automatic eviction if tenants fall eight weeks behind with their rent.

It said: "The approaches outlined here [in the report] have yet to be become a matter of routine and the use of ground eight remains widespread."

The report insisted that it was not recommending leniency, but rather a more constructive way of recovering rent.

"The best initiatives recognise the difficulties that tenants face and incorporate these into realistic solutions. This is not a soft option and, on the contrary, requires fast and proactive housing management to intervene before arrears spiral."

The study predicted fewer landlords would resort to the courts now that they are required to report the number of tenants that they evict.