When would proposed provisions of cancelling no fault evictions possibly come into effect?

Question

See the following article which refers to a white paper.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61817249

Landlords are to be prevented from evicting tenants in England without giving a reason, under proposals published in a government White Paper.

The Renters Reform Bill will also end blanket bans on benefit claimants or families with children - and landlords must consider requests to allow pets.

How long does this type of thing take to come into effect and what is the status of the legislation? Where can the proposals and legislation be found/read?

Answer 1

At the time of writing (June 2022), the bill referred to in the White Paper has not been published. However, on p8 of the document (p12 in the PDF version), it states:

We know action is needed now and the Renters Reform Bill will bring forward legislation in this Parliamentary session to deliver on our wide-reaching commitments.

The current session began in May 2022, and is expected to run until around May 2023.

However, even if the bill completes its passage through Parliament within that period, changes of this nature usually don't come into force for some time, in order to allow landlords to change their plans.

I didn't spot a timetable for this in White Paper, but a useful comparison is a planned change to the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) requirements for rental properties.

The government is proposing to raise the minimum EPC level for rental properties from grade E to grade C. It is currently just a proposal, but if it goes ahead, the current understanding of the timetable is this:

The Government’s proposal in the Bill is that rental properties meet a compulsory energy performance certificate rating of band “C” on new tenancies by December 2025, and on all rented properties by December 2028.

So 3 years from now for existing tenancies, and 5 for new ones. So by analogy, we might expect any change to "no-fault" evictions to follow a similar timetable, as a minimum.

We should know more when the bill is published.

Answer 2

The White Paper referred to is A fairer private rented sector which introduces the Renters Reform Bill. However at time of writing, the Bill does not seem to have been published on the Parliamentary Bills website. (It's only been a few days - I'll keep checking and update accordingly.)

There is no set time frame for a Bill to become law, some don't even get that far, but those that do follow a set Legislative process with a number of stages:

The time taken to go through all these stages depends on the length of the bill, how controversial it is and whether it needs to be passed particularly quickly. An emergency bill may be passed in a matter of days, whereas a larger bill may be introduced at the beginning of the session and only passed at the end a year later.