A LAW that makes it harder for councils and housing associations to evict tenants for failing to pay their rent has come into place.
Changes introduced by the Housing Scotland Act 2010 mean social landlords need to undertake a series of actions before going to court to evict a tenant.
Housing charity Shelter Scotland welcomed the move. Director Graeme Brown said 78,000 threats of eviction were issued against council and housing association tenants last year.
He added: "Too many social landlords are using the threat of eviction as a rent collection method."
The new legislation requires social landlords to meet seven key actions, called pre-action requirements, such as offering tenants advice on housing benefit and making reasonable efforts to agree a repayment plan for rent arrears.
Tenants will also get a final chance to reach agreement with the landlord on repayments after a court eviction order has been granted.
Councils carried out 1,061 evictions in the 2010-11 financial year, with other social landlords evicting 761 tenants, Shelter Scotland said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article