From today, Section 21 'no fault' eviction notices are no longer valid in England. Labour calls this the biggest reform of the rental market in 40 years. They are right that it is significant. They are wrong about almost everything else. Because what the figures from the run-up to today's deadline actually show is a panic. Landlord possession instructions in March hit a 60% year-on-year increase — the highest monthly spike since records began. Section 21 instructions alone were up 43% in the first quarter of the year.

That is not a market settling into a new equilibrium. That is a market in retreat. And every one of those notices represents a tenant being moved on, often into temporary accommodation, often with children in tow, almost always at higher rents than they were paying before. Labour ministers say there is no spike. The Land Registry, the courts and the housing charities say otherwise.

The Predictable Consequence

None of this should come as a surprise. Reform UK warned, the Conservatives warned, the National Residential Landlords Association warned, and every serious housing economist warned. If you make it harder and slower to recover possession of a property, fewer people will let property out. Supply contracts. Rents rise. The tenants who do find a place have to clear higher hurdles to get it — guarantors, six months upfront where allowed, immaculate references. The rest are pushed into the social housing waiting list, into temporary B&Bs paid for by the council taxpayer, or out of the area altogether.

That is exactly what is happening now. Travel-and-Tour World reported this week that the act is producing what it called an 'unlettable tenant crisis' — a market defined by qualified demand rather than sheer demand, where landlords pick the strongest applicant and quietly refuse to let to anyone with a benefit history, a young child, or a pet. Labour says the Act bans discrimination on those grounds. The market is finding ways around it because the underlying maths has not changed: if you cannot remove a problem tenant, you do not let to anyone who looks even slightly like a risk.

Section 8 Will Not Save You

Ministers point to Section 8 as the alternative — the route landlords are now expected to use if they want to recover their property. The reality is that Section 8 is slow, expensive, and contested. It runs through the courts at a time when the courts are running between six and twelve months behind on housing claims. A landlord facing rent arrears or property damage can be looking at a year or more before they recover possession, with no guarantee of getting anything back at the end.

Now add the £7,000 civil penalty for issuing an invalid notice. Add the new rules limiting rent increases to once a year. Add the prohibition on more than a month's rent in advance. The cumulative effect is to make small-scale buy-to-let economically unviable for anyone without significant cash reserves. The professional, well-funded landlord stays in. The retired teacher with one extra property as her pension top-up sells up. Knight Frank has already halved its UK house price forecast as a direct consequence.

Who Actually Pays

The people who pay for this are not the Mayfair landlords who already have lawyers on retainer and rents at levels that absorb the new costs. They will be fine. The people who pay are the renters in Preston, in Sunderland, in Stoke, in Plymouth — the people Labour claimed it was helping. Their landlords are the small operators who own one or two properties and who simply cannot absorb a year-long Section 8 case. Those landlords are selling, and when they sell, they sell to owner-occupiers — taking the property out of the rental market entirely.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has been warning about this all year. So have Citizens Advice. So have the homelessness charities. Labour's response has been to deny the figures, blame the landlords, and brief that anyone who criticises the Act is in the pocket of the rentier class. It is the classic move of a government that has run out of arguments.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK would scrap the most damaging provisions of the Renters' Rights Act before they have a chance to embed. We would keep the abolition of Section 21 — that has cross-party support and is not the real problem — but we would dramatically speed up Section 8 by creating a fast-track housing tribunal that resolves arrears and antisocial behaviour cases within weeks, not months. We would lift the cap on advance rent for tenants who want to pay it. We would scrap the rent-control creep that is already deterring investment.

Above all, we would build. The single biggest cause of the rental crisis is that we have not built enough houses for thirty years. Every other policy is a sticking plaster on that fundamental wound. Reform UK would reform the planning system, end the green belt sacred-cow politics around brownfield sites, and back the local councils that actually want to deliver homes. Labour talks about housing. We would deliver it.

Today's landlord exodus was avoidable. Labour was warned. They pressed on regardless. Tenants will live with the consequences for years.