“There’s no light in the kitchen. The family are using a desk lamp in there, and there’s no cooker that works. There’s water running down the walls. We sent blankets home for the kids. But they don’t want to complain – they will be thrown out, and that means temporary accommodation – and you know it will be one of those hotels on the Hagley Road in Birmingham … and how will they get the kids to school?”
I was sat with the safeguarding lead for one of my primary schools, talking about one of their families and their private rented flat. Just another day as teacher in one of the lowest income areas of the country.
This story is a composite – but my inbox and my surgeries are full of them. I have talked to so many families, out of their minds with worry about keeping their kids in school, clutching an unwanted Section 21 or an unreasonable rent rise letter.
After two decades of campaigning for renters, I became the Labour MP for Tipton and Wednesbury in the Black Country in 2024. We are proud and we are resilient, but 50 years of deindustrialisation and 14 long years of Tory austerity mean wages are low and poverty is high. Social renting is about a third – but private renting is rising fast, up to nearly a quarter of all households.
Much of the private rented sector in my ends is former council homes sold off over decades, leaving families who might once have expected lifelong security exposed to higher costs and instability. And my towns have few professional renters, no student blocks – but an increasing number of poorly managed Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) rented out by the room, aimed squarely at those with few other choices.
I think of the renters I have met these last two years – struggling with rogue landlords and high rents, nervous every day to raise the gas safety certificate four months overdue, the back door that doesn’t close, the fan heater which eats money cos the landlord won’t fix the central heating.
From 1st May, that changes. No more no fault evictions. No more Section 21 letters dropping like a bombshell on an unsuspecting family. Every renter will now have a rolling tenancy. If they keep up with the rent, they keep their home.
The law now recognises a simple truth that renters have always known: a home is not a favour that can be withdrawn at will. It is the foundation of family life, security and dignity.
For 40 years, Section 21 stacked the cards firmly in favour of the landlord’s right to profit from an asset, over the renter’s right to a stable home. And that power imbalance meant renters constantly worried about whether they’d be able to keep their kids in school and stay in their home. It kept people silent about disrepair, afraid to complain, reluctant to put down roots.
But no more. That is why the end of Section 21 matters so deeply. Renters will now know that no one can throw them out of their home just cos. Landlords will still be able to run their businesses; they will have clear grounds to regain their property when they genuinely need to. But risk – previously wholly borne by renters – will finally be shared.
And a safe, decent home matters too. Applying the Decent Homes Standard to private renting, bringing in Awaab’s Law, and backing councils to enforce the rules will finally tackle the damp, mould, faulty electrics and infestations that I have seen renter after renter forced to endure. A landlord who will not fix a home should not be rewarded.
In Tipton and Wednesbury, what many of my constituents actually need is a social home. But with 21,000 households on the waiting list locally, no matter how much we build (and we are building as much as we can), that won’t be where many families live. So getting the quality of private rents up, making them secure, giving families a home they know they can stay in – that matters.
So to everyone who rents their home, I say this: this Labour Government has your back. No more no fault evictions. Security for families. Safer homes. Proper action on rogue landlords.
Over the last two years, I have voted for this change over and over – so many times, as the landlord lobby mounted one last stand for their right to control tenants’ lives through the House of Lords.
Take a moment to feel proud. All of us who kept on taking on the landlord lobby, who kept on standing up for renters – all of us who voted in a Labour government – we made this happen.
Antonia Bance is the Labour MP for Tipton and Wednesbury in the West Midlands. Before her election she was a senior trade union officer at the TUC. She was previously head of campaigns at Shelter and a board member of both the Nationwide Foundation and Generation Rent.
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