Housing and Planning Bill

My Lords, I also support my noble friend’s amendment. I understand from briefings from Crisis and other organisations that this is quite a small problem. There are approximately 1.4 million landlords and I think the Government believe that only about 1,750 tenancies are abandoned every year, which is less than 0.5% of private rented households. However, the problem is that there does not seem to be enough security or protection for tenants against greedy or rogue landlords speeding up the process—whether someone is on holiday, is in hospital or has other problems with the landlord and has gone to stay with friends while work that should be done is not being done. There seems to be no way for the local authority—unless the Minister can assure me otherwise—to guarantee that the property has been properly abandoned, rather than it being a case of the rogue landlord using this as a short cut to regain possession. What is needed is an authoritative checking device—for which the local authority, the environmental health officer, the housing officer, or whoever, is best placed—to ensure that the keys have been handed in, the furniture has been removed, the tenant has moved away and the children are no longer there. That is the sort of evidence we want, not the landlord’s hope that because the tenant has not been seen for eight weeks—which might be because they are in hospital, or have gone back to a family home elsewhere in the continent for the summer—they can gain speedy possession that is not legitimate.