Chamber and committees

Since the beginning of the pandemic the Scottish Government has acted swiftly to support both tenants and landlords. Through the Private Rented Sector and Social Housing Resilience groups, made up of Scottish Government and key housing partner organisations, we have promoted support options and awareness raising of rights, to assist in negating the devastating impacts brought by the current crisis. Alongside this work, I wrote to all tenants in the private rented and social rented sectors setting out the available support.

The current Pre-action requirements on private rented sector landlords, introduced temporarily under the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act, are intended to ensure that private landlords work with tenants experiencing difficulties with paying their rent before taking action to seek eviction. It is for the Tribunal to consider evidence as to the extent to which a private landlord has engaged with their tenant to resolve rent arrears as part of the pre-action protocol requirements when they are considering applications for eviction. The implementation of the requirements will be kept under review to assess the effectiveness.

Landlords in the social rented sector are already subject to pre-action requirements for all rent arrear cases. These were introduced by the Housing (Scotland ) Act 2010 and came into effect in 2012 to strengthen the protection for tenants facing eviction for rent arrears. Before an eviction order is granted, social landlords must satisfy the court that they have given tenants in arrears every opportunity to take up help to manage their debts and to agree an affordable and sustainable repayment plan. This means that social landlords must have exhausted all attempts to resolve rent arrears with the tenant before taking action to evict.