Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether his Department has issued guidance to local authorities on banning the eviction of people living in local authority housing during the November 2020 covid-19 lockdown.

On 16 November we changed the law in England to ensure bailiffs do not enforce evictions over this period of national restrictions or the Christmas period. This means that no eviction notices may be served until 11 January and, given the 14 day notice period required, no evictions are expected until 25 January at the earliest. The only exceptions to this are for the most serious cases, such as anti-social behaviour and perpetrators of domestic abuse in social housing.

Guidance for landlords, including local authority landlords, is published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-and-renting-guidance-for-landlords-tenants-and-local-authorities.

Guidance for social landlords on understanding the possession action process is published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/understanding-the-possession-action-process-guidance-for-landlords-and-tenants.

We will aim to provide further guidance regarding the operation of the exemptions shortly.