ENGLAND — Social housing landlords in England will be able to evict domestic abuse perpetrators under a new bill that also extends the tenancy requirement for the right-to-buy scheme from three to 10 years. The legislation, announced in King Charles’s speech on 13 May, is scheduled for debate in the House of Lords on Monday.
If the bill passes its second reading and receives royal assent, landlords will gain the power to remove abusers from social housing properties. Currently, perpetrators can be evicted only after the victim has moved out. In joint tenancies, victims often have no choice but to end the tenancy entirely, which can lead to homelessness. The new law would close a legal loophole that enables abusers to force victims out by ending a joint tenancy during their own eviction proceedings.
Courts would be authorized to transfer a joint tenancy into the victim’s sole name or require landlords to provide suitable alternative accommodation where appropriate. According to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, about 15,000 families in England were forced to find new social housing last year due to domestic abuse.
The bill also revises the right-to-buy policy, originally introduced under Margaret Thatcher’s government, which previously allowed tenants to purchase their homes after three years. Newly built social homes would be protected from right-to-buy for 35 years, and hard-to-replace rural homes would be exempt from the scheme entirely. Councils would also gain a stronger right of first refusal to repurchase properties previously sold under right to buy. Additionally, the legislation removes outdated provisions from the 2016 Housing and Planning Act, including mandates that required councils to sell high-value homes, offer fixed-term tenancies, and charge higher rents to higher-income tenants.
Keir Starmer wrote in the Guardian: “Families were left in limbo on waiting lists for years and incredibly, domestic abuse survivors found themselves forced out of their homes because landlords lacked the powers to make their abuser the one who must leave.” The Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance welcomed the bill’s progress in parliament, calling it “an important and long overdue step forward.”