A charity is reported to be claiming that increasing numbers of landlords use security guards dressed as bailiffs to help evict private tenants.
The claim is made by Safer Renting, a charity operating in seven London boroughs, which says this tactic is increasingly common amongst what it calls “criminal landlords.”
The Observer reports Safer Renting spokesperson Ben Reeve-Lewis saying: “We’ve seen a spate of cases this year where landlords have used uniformed security guards to give the impression of a court-sanctioned eviction. In the past, criminal landlords may have sent heavies to throw tenants out, but this is the first time in 33 years of working in the private-rented sector that I’ve seen fake bailiffs kitted out with stab vests, radios and handcuffs. Some of them even have vans with police-like livery on the side.”
In the article, Reeve is quoted in relation to unnamed families evicted in east London, and he says: “The families are in temporary accommodation now but the woman is having trouble getting her son to his special school as she is further away. We’re taking legal action to get them back in. These kinds of cases shock the general public, but we see it all the time.”
Another case study cited, again with an unnamed family, allegedly involved a landlord hiring a property enforcement company to remove a parent and five children. It says: “The guards, who arrived in a van with police-like battenburg markings, tried to force their way in while she was working, claiming the family was trespassing. They only left when Safer Renting intervened.”
The charity claims there is an illegal eviction happening every hour of every day claims the police “too often side with the landlord” or treat cases as civil disputes.
You can read the full piece here.
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Well a major London Court yesterday said they were suspending all evictions while they source ‘emergency PPE’. Not sure what was wrong with the old stuff. But hey more delays for landlords etc. Who cares.
The law is always against landlords. I’m not surprised some landlords have to resort to this.
Bet the problems leading to eviction weren't fake!
As sad landlord says and it's been said many times before- landlords don't evict without good reason.
Bet this is when people are fed up with the lengthily and inefficient eviction process. Creative. Inspiring. The old fashioned way of removal is more effective. This is like people and shops hire bodyguards and security guards.
Well perhaps if it was easier to get people out this would not be necessary. No landlord evicts good tenants who are paying the rent and looking after the place.
If the tenants pay ALL of their rent on-time, every time - respect our property - and respect their neighbours - there shouldn't be any problem at all.
Our tenants are not allowed to visit Tesco and walk out with a load of unpaid groceries - in fact Tesco hires a military-grade security force (with stab vests and looking like SO19) to protect their stores and no-one bats an eye-lid.
Virgin Media routinely cuts-off thousands of households per month for not paying their bills and no-one bats an eye-lid.
Ahh I was forgetting Tesco and Virgin Media are massive, untouchable corporations.
Martin,
For the first time ever you have a green tick from me 😂
Hell Fire Johnny 5 has your algorithm been monitoring what we are all saying??? Johnny 5's Alive...!
Martin has had a personality transplant!
Exactly!!! I have been repeating this so many times - why are other businesses different from private lettings? No one goes and gets things from shops unpaid - that’s called stealing and illegal!! Why is someone renting a house and not paying for it illegal? If someone goes into shops and thrash something, that’s illegal. The shops can say pets not allowed!!!!!!!! Shops can charge what they want to charge for their commodities!!! We can’t say no pets in our own property, thrashing our property is not illegal, we can’t charge rents we want - they want rent freeze. Next, we need to pay rent to the council for where we live? Because we are lazy landlords sitting on our backs and collecting rents from other people - we are not a legitimate business or even people who do a day’s job - is that the impression?????
Oops I forgot the mental health side of it - only tenants are allowed to have and use mental health issues with all the problems - we landlords, probably the government, and tenants think, do not have a brain to have issues anyway, or, because we are fat landlords with all the rents and fat money that we cannot have mental health issues can we? We only have all the taxes to think about, the rules and regulations to keep up, with one added everyday, to deal with everyone propagating us as the baddies in the equation, rising costs, mortgage interests rise, EPC upgrade expenses, no eviction rules, promise of more taxes whichever party wins the election, no interest relief - Noooooooo, none of these are worthy of mental health issue. Wait - I totally forgot about bad tenants (do they exist??), rent arrear, thrashing property, pets have to be allowed and we have to deal with whatever comes with that, no can’t take deposit worthy of the damage, no way, rolling tenancies - the joyous circumstances do not and cannot have mental health deterioration, because - only tenants are worthy of it - who knows - they may bring a legislation to say, as a landlord, it is illegal for you to claim in court that the tenants behaviour is causing you mental health issues!!!!!Isn’t that quite a possibility???????
Very inventive I must say 👋
Hello you have not paid rent, what do you wish to do about it?
Nothing now leave me alone you are hurting my feelings!
Can I please request you bring the rent up to date or at least propose how you will bring it up to date?
No and I am not paying anything, do not call again or I will class this as harassment.
(Three months later)
Hello you have still not paid and I will have to evict you, last chance before I serve you notice.
Don't care and I'm not moving, council said you cannot do anything and charities have said don't worry about it you cannot do anything for about a year...
Oh dear, I'll send the lads in then....
No wonder it gets to that point.
Well with current rules as soon as it gets to 2 months rent owed you issue section 8 and Section 21 (in case section 8 fails). Not sure what we will be doing if the renters rights bill gets through.
But when you submit the Section 8 and Section 21 the Court wants evidence. Not straight forward, may need to be assessed by an expert. Currently tenant has submitted a defence against a section 21, waiting on a Court date and I need to defend my actions!! I'm the one that's owed more than 4K in rent.
It's beyond a joke
Shelters a fake charity. A business dressed up as something it’s not. When the Law sides with those in the wrong it’s little surprise if it’s indeed true that a few will come up with unique ways of dealing with things .
Correct, it is political vehicle.
I got an email from Nationwide urging me to vote in their AGM and offering to make a donation to Shelter for every vote cast as an "incentive".
I emailed the CEO ( who joined from one of the big banks I think) pointing out that Shelter HARMS their customers, whether Landlords, owner occupiers or rent paying tenants. I can guarantee that Nationwide don't have as depositors or want as borrowers the type of rogue tenants who are the only ones which Shelter helps.
I have had no reply.
Similar letters to B&Q and a large Glasgow factor who also boast about helping Shelter despite them harming their own clients have also been ignored - although the Glasgow factors no longer make this boast in emails etc.
PS. I have never voted in any Building Society AGM but I now have a good reason not to do so - wonder if Nationwide are actually wanting to limit the number of votes?
No wonder landlords are resorting to this... It shows how desperate the situation is.
Remember a few years ago a landlord who got that fed up of a tenant not paying rent. He was calling and going round to see him but the little scally was missing every time he went round. A fairly reasonable guy let it go on for four months before he had enough.
S21 didn't work so he called the tenant who ignored the call, he messaged him to say he was calling round, again ignored the message so went round and let in a couple of guys with the instructions to make themselves at home.
Tenant gone within 24hours and because of that he sold up and got out, he said to me that while he made good money out of it the drama and aggravation he put up with in the end was too much.
He got to the end of his limit and can imagine this happens to a few others, I am approaching 3k in overdue rent and still waiting for the courts to give me possession back of one of my properties. It's tough....
Anecdotal story around here.
Tenants refused to pay rent for a while. The landlord sent a message to say that new windows would be fitted - tenant couldn't believe their luck!
Window fitters arrived and removed all the old windows .... and then left and didn't come back!
Soon after, the tenant left
Well it is nice to know that the hate propaganda spewing out of these hate gang is not designed to victimise ,harass ,degrade or intimidate landlords and their children
Based on their numbers every tenant in london is evicted every few months using these methods
Lets have some numbers of our own ,every half hour of every day a landlords child is subject to hate crime abuse and mental torture at the hands of these organised gangs ,every half hour of every day landlords and their families suffer discrimination injustice and slander ,every half hour of every day these monsters of hate traumatise and destroy another innocent family how about that for some numbers
Of course everyone is assuming the charity is telling the truth. I also note that the tenants are unmarried mother's with lots of children, who have special needs. I also note that it's east London, and the police don't intervene. Could the enforcement offices come from the council ?
I'm going through an eviction as I'm writing this message. I served notice on May 23rd, 2023 and tenant decided to not pay rent due on the 28th. Regardless, all Landlord's should follow the correct protocol, take out Landlord's insurance, that covers for non payment of rent, malicious damage and possession orders, if tenant fails to vacate after 2 months of serving Section 21.
With legal cover of up to £100K, we should not do anything that will incriminate or invalidate the Section 21 notice.
Fully agree with you that we all should follow the rules, couple of points. My insurance company that I have been with for over ten years decided they will exit the BTL insurance so had to find another provider as my cover was about to expire.
Being a stand up chap I explained to the new provider that I had an issue and they then refused to cover it. So currently without insurance on that property, the original insurance provider it was outside their guidelines (6months) to cover because of non payment. Stuck between a rock and hard place.
I got my agent to do the referencing. Had my own landlord insurance for rent arrears and evictions. But the referencing by the agent was weak. The original referencing company a year later would then not cover this tenant they referenced due to payment problems.
I have just got my property back since my tenant decided not to pay rent from November last year.
He left without a forwarding address, but it has taken all this time to get the property back legally.
I am also responsible for removing and storing all the property that he left behind, which I have to keep for 14 days.
I have also had to replace carpets that were ruined.
I have really had enough of the pressure of renting out property and this one has now gone on the market, with all the others that I have, to follow.
When l read this report l am minded of a case 5 ish years ago in Birmingham. Similar situation, mother was going through every social media account with similar stories about heartless council etc. She claimed that the boiler had exploded and blew off the wall. She complainrd the charities she was trying to use were hopeless. However the council had got an eviction order but she kept bringing up last minute excuses and refused to go numerous times stopping the bailiffs at the door. In the end she left and moved, it appears to a more sympathetic council, in the London area. Also a lady with the same name was convicted of a very violent offence a long time before. The tenant did not come from Birmingham and neither did the offender.
I wouldn’t be surprised who a landlord would hire to recover his property so much injustice going on it’s an absolute disgrace what’s happening.
Our Property is being Confiscation plain and simple all have their spouts in the trough.
Even landlord Insurance continuously adding more Terms and Conditions while making more exclusions, so it’s hardly a policy anymore just a money train.
The most recent one is the £1’000.00 subsidence excess is now being raised to £7’500.
The amazing thing about all of this is landlords are the only Business that’s not allowed to have Terms & Conditions everyone else impose their conditions on us.
Just seen pod cast of The Renters Reform Bill it’s obviously designed to remove all Landlords rights.
The experts Kate & Sean really telling us it won’t make much difference, nothing could be further from the truth, 4 lame duck options to get your Property back none of which is satisfactory.
(1) Tenants arrears.
(2) Tenants cause a nuisance.
(3) You want to Sell.
(4) You or your family wants to move in.
None of their Business what we want to do, it’s our Property not theirs, they didn’t buy it or make any contribution, just come with hands hanging walk-in & take over.
So in reality the only way to get them out is to sell, then you the landlord is out and the Tenants are out, more homelessness more shortage of supply, who on Earth is peddling this nonsense.
The clueless Goverment
The Property redress Scheme another side kick for a branch of Landlords Association, who have set themselves up to run the totally unnecessary one sided Scheme just like the worse than useless Deposit Scheme set up in 2007 to protect the Deposit itself instead of the Property.
Where is the Landlords protection who is going to Redress us. Everyone scamming the Landlords and having a field day.
Should we all crowdfund and get a solicitor to challenge all the atrocities against landlords????????????? They do that with many other professions - I remember when they changed the IR35 rules, which was really atrocious as the self employed were then changed and considered as employed for tax purposes (only) without any pension or holiday benefits as the employed, but still said this was legitimate.
How can all this unfairness be legitimate?::
Probably because landlords are seen as a legitimate target for no-hopers to claim that we are greedy and uncaring and only in it for a quick profit.
They see our income as unearned and a property as a home and not an asset.
We appear to be being vilified from all sides of the political spectrum.
It is not a very good time to be a landlord.
Because the government are clueless
So the government introduce legislation making it more difficult for landlords to supply and maintain properties to rent and then they are making it more difficult to get their property back! What were they expecting to happen!!
Evening fellow Landlords - if it is OK with you I would like to hijack this thread. I have just read an incredibly biased piece of journalism published by I news saying that Rebel Tory MPs may force renters reforms to be put on ice . It is very biased against Landlords and written by someone called Vicky Spratt. It ends by claiming that the Government have asked the NRLA to talk to Mr Mangnall (one of the MPs behind this move) to see if he will scale back his amendments - if this is true then my blood is boiling. Why should the NRLA who are supposed to support Landlords (ha ha) be pulled into asking MPs to water down their objections to this bill. The article says that a group of Cons MPs some of whom are Landlords want amendments to the bill etc etc.... In addition I news claim that there are 49 conservative back benchers supporting this move against the RRB and this media news outlet then go on to list all of the MPs within that group who are landlords which turns out to be 16 of them. So 32.65% of the group are Landlords but 67.35% are not! I have just received a reply from my local MP George Freeman who has made placatory noises re this bill for months but has now admitted he will not be opposing it and repeated the mantra about safe and secure housing etc. Can I ask all of you who are willing to support this to write to your local MP again (I know it often falls on deaf ears) and point out the recent GBN interview with Jacob Rees Mogg and now this initiative is being floated in parliament and ask them to support it. I know it is a long shot but we have to keep trying. Thanks for reading
Sadly, Catherine, my local faux-Tory MP (John Penrose) doesn't even read what I send anymore. I just get a standard email acknowledgement from his secretary. He did not like me pointing out that not everyone supported RRB.
That is why I will be votng for REFORM.
me too
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