Ed Miliband the leader of the Labour Party has urged both councils and social landlord’s to be cautious before deciding to evict any tenant who is convicted of criminal behaviour during the riots that have caused millions of pounds worth of damage to English towns and cities.
Already a number of councils and landlords that include Nottingham, Salford and Greenwich have announced that they will be actively seeking to evict any of their tenants who are convicted. Prime Minister David Cameron has told others to follow the example and the Coalition will also be looking at giving the rubber stamp to plans that will give local authorities more power to fast track evictions.
The Government are eager to change the housing laws so that social landlords who have thousands of properties covered by landlord insurance are able to evict tenants who are convicted of criminal activity outside the area they live in. This would allow Haringey Council for example the power to evict any tenant who was convicted of rioting in Enfield. However, the Labour leader thinks despite it being the correct decision this should not be a knee-jerk solution.
Mr Miliband said: “Knee-jerk solutions often don’t work. Solutions that you come up with on day one may not be such a good idea on day ten. So let’s work through the solutions and come up with the right kind of response. What I would like to see changed is the law which sees ‘looting tourism’. If we can stop people going outside their borough to escape eviction, it can only be a good thing.”
Legal experts have already warned that some evictions will be extremely difficult because of cheap landlord insurance and the current act generally stipulates that local councils and social landlords can only evict tenants under very specific circumstances and many have also warned that evictions will simply export troublemakers to other areas.