Reform & Revolution 6 – Rent Acts 1957-1977

Published by Hannah Wooderson for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Featured

Over the coming months 24housing is unravelling – through personal testimony – the top 10 events, chosen by our panel of experts, to have shaped housing in the last 60 years.

No 6 – Rent Acts 1957-1977

More than 20 years after the Tories paved the way for Rachminism in 1957 – a contributing factor in the ensuing race riots around the country, most famously in Notting Hill – the UK rental market entered its golden age of security.

Weaving in and out of the decisive turning points – and drawing from a career of case law – housing barrister David Watkinson provides a snapshot of a turbulent period that swung the balance of power from landlord to tenant.

The Rent Act 1957 – “Not too far off from where we are now.”

The Act gave landlords the freedom to set rents of tenancies granted after the Act came in as high as they could get, and made it comparatively straightforward to evict them if they didn’t pay. Funnily enough, it’s not too far off from where we are at now.

The 1957 Act effectively removed rent control and security of tenure for all post 1957 Act tenancies. This is essentially the situation now in the private sector since the introduction of assured shorthold tenancies in the 1988 Housing Act and particularly since the Housing Act 1996, after which, a tenancy granted in the private sector is assumed to be an assured shorthold i.e. no requirement of notice to tenant advising that it is an assured shorthold.

It was in the landlord’s interest to get rid of rent-act protected tenants because they could exercise their rights, so there were landlords who used to either harass them out or buy them out well below what they would have got if they’d been properly advised.

There was a fair amount of unlawful eviction going on. It didn’t have to be coming around with guns and axes and running somebody out. It was often things like cutting off the electricity of gas and spending a long time getting round to reconnecting it or not reconnecting it at all. It could also be – and this was what Peter Rachman was supposed to have been doing – moving noisy neighbours in next door, or moving in black neighbours. Because of the racism of the time, people didn’t want black neighbours.

I came into housing after the fall of Rachman. The housing situation certainly contributed to racial tension. Black people taking homes as white people saw it; black people being forced into worse housing as black people saw it.

The Rent Act 1965 – “Brought back security.”

This brought back protection and also provision against unlawful eviction and that was a reaction against what had been going on during the 1957 – 1965 period, most famously in Notting Hill.

It’s very important because it virtually brought to an end unlawful eviction – although over a period of time – I say “virtually” because in the early part of my practice, which I started in 1974, I did a fair amount of injunctions to prevent unlawful eviction or to reinstate people after they had been evicted. So you could say the message hadn’t quite got across. But things had changed.  

This, and the reintroduction of the concept of ‘fair rents’ went hand in hand. The whole purpose of the rent acts from the beginning in 1915 was rent control so that landlords could not take advantage of housing scarcity. There would be nothing gained if the tenant could get the rent down but then be evicted – so the Acts had to restrict the landlord from obtaining possession as well.  

An impact was that there were many attempts to avoid the Rent Acts by granting sham licences, “holiday” lets or naming a company as the tenant rather than the actual occupier on the tenancy agreement. This led to a great deal of litigation in the 1970s and 1980s. 

1970 First law centre, Notting Hill – “Where most of my work came from.”

It’s in Notting Hill that the first law centre is founded in 1970 – the Notting Hill Neighbourhood Law Centre on Portobello Road – which is the first law centre in the UK and sparks a mini wave of law centres. By the time I start practice in 1974 there are law centres fairly newly opened in Hackney, Camden and Islington.

Notting Hill attracted money precisely because of the notoriety that it had because of the riots. During the early part of my career the majority of my work came from law centres.

It was pretty significant. For quite a while they were the most active of bodies in enforcing the rent acts. They are less of a feature now, because of the fairly wide body of private law firms many of whom are ex law centre solicitors.

It was the intention to set up the law centres in kinds of communities that were essentially excluded from legal services. The perception was the solicitors firms were clustered either in the wealthier areas or round courts so poorer areas were deprived of access to advice and crucially representation in court.

There are now about 60 law centres around England and Wales although in recent years there have been some closures as funding has become unavailable. Their role is less vital but still important because of private solicitors taking up social welfare work.  

The Rent Act 1974 – “We used to call it the rent lino act.”

The 1974 Act extended protection of the rent acts for furnished tenants. Beforehand, it had only been unfurnished lettings that were covered.

This was a major turning point for private sector tenants. Before 1974, in order to avoid the rent act landlords had not been letting properties unfurnished – they’d been putting some furniture in so they would avoid the effect of the 1968 Act.

We used to call it the “rent act lino” – you put a bit of furniture in and say the rent act didn’t apply.

There’s a whole industry of litigation that grew up prior to the 1974 act which was about arguing whether what was let as furnished really was furnished.

There was a provision within the 1968 act that the rent included payment in respect of furniture, which formed a “substantial part of the whole rent” so if the furniture element formed less than a “substantial part” it was an unfurnished letting and not a furnished letting.

Mostly, the landlord did provide sufficient furniture – carpeting etc to make the place habitable but it was cheap second-hand furniture – the way of dealing with this was to call a furniture valuer who gave a figure for the value of the furniture as purchased – depreciate over a period - and show that the result was less than 10 per cent of the annual rent i.e less than “substantial” – this approach was approved by the Court of Appeal in Woodward v Docherty 1974 1 WLR 966.  

I had cases that were about establishing whether people were protected tenants before 1974. Before it came in there was a fair quantity of lawful eviction going on because you had landlords evicting furnished tenants in advance of the 1974 rent act, which they knew was coming, in order to avoid protection. If the cases were successful, that was prevented.

Housing Act 1980 ‘The golden age of security.’

The introduction of tenant security in the public sector marked the golden age of security in the UK. From 1980, both public and private sector tenants had security of tenure and their tenancies could only be ended by a court order on specified grounds. Prior to this public sector tenants had no defence against eviction, even if they argued it was unlawful. In fact, there was a case (Cannock Chase DV v Kelly 1978 1 WLR 1) where the court of appeal ruled that the authority didn’t even have to produce a reason why it wanted to evict, even if the tenant had been a perfectly good one.

The main spring for security in the public sector was of course the Right to Buy, which was originally dependent on the tenancy having lasted for three years. So you had to have security, because otherwise the risk was local authorities would just evict.

So far as security was concerned I would say that local authority tenants had (and have) the highest form – although the actual number of local authority tenancies have decreased substantially. The downsides are that there is no formal rent control – the local authority has the power to charge “reasonable” rents but it is for the local authority to decide what is reasonable subject to government guidance – which can go in either direction. The other downside is the repair condition of a great deal of local authority property – although the worst housing is still in the private sector.

In terms of lasting legacy, the 1980 act had a resounding effect, as the provisions carry on to the present day, with some qualifications.

Rent Acts – in a nutshell

Rent control in Britain began in 1915 when a rent strike in Glasgow caused Lloyd George’s government to quickly push through the Rent Restrictions Act of 1915, significantly improving the legal position of working class tenants. A year before it was introduced it was estimated that around 95 per cent of all households rented their homes from private landlords. Today the figure is less than eight per cent. The Housing Act 1988 commenced the phasing out of rent acts. New tenancies created on or after this date are assured tenancies, allowing landlords to charge a full market rent and tenants to let the property for a short period only; getting it back, if they wish, after six months.