Mike, this is you, once again, taking the “Victimising Media”‘s view. Landlords (and I should know, as I am one, albeit in a relatively small way) have come under the same media umbrella as benefits cheats. We know there are a few really bad landlords, but they are the minority, just as benefits cheats are the minority. This government, in particular, are demonising certain categories of the population (quite a lot of categories, if you really think about it) in order to blind the general population to more serious things going on. The Councils were the worst slum landlords and that property was passed onto the housing associations who, I believe, are doing a much better job of it. It is especially less likely nowadays to have sub-standard property given the deluge of legislation that has come the landlord’s way over the last few years. It’s not so much revenge evictions that’s the problem. The problem is often getting tenants to tell you when something needs to be done before it gets worse and costs more money to fix in the longer term. We need to have the ability to request tenants to leave, because if you’d seen the state some of them make, you would think again. If someone came into your home and, in the course of a party or a few drunken weekends, managed to: remove skirting boards, punch holes in walls and doors, paint varnished window frames, cover up marks on the walls with a different shade of paint, break internal glass doors, leave stains on carpets, burn everything from carpets to acrylic shower trays with cigarettes and have pets they’re not supposed to have and the accompanying mess, you would want recourse to a reasonable law to have them removed before you went bankrupt. One of our last tenants was a very pleasant man and always well dressed. Latterly, we discovered he was an alcoholic (it’s often difficult even for experienced agents to know who the good tenants will be) and had a relapse. In the last 3 months of his tenancy he did most of the above and the stench, when we got the property back after the agent (now fired) asked him to leave, had me backing back out of the door – he had left dog food rotting in the sink and his hygiene had gone down the toilet, unlike his wee, which was all over the floor around the toilet and black with dirt. The things he didn’t do (the list was longer) have been done (and much, much more) by other tenants over the last 2 decades I’ve been involved in letting out property. Do you really think it’s acceptable for a property owner to have it trashed and not be able to do anything about it? Perhaps we need to have a law to say that a tenant causing criminal damage to a property should just be carted off into custody, charged and taken to court. Not only is it much less easy to make any kind of profit when you have so many checks and registration to pay for, but the repairs and maintenance after each tenant can be quite heart-stopping. Deposits almost never cover the amount of work needing done. I would be quite happy to see a database available to landlords to see who the bad tenants are. They would have to clean up their act, because no private landlord would touch them with a barge pole. It has gotten so bad we now consider ourselves to be in the “tenant subsidy” business and, when property prices at last start to rise, will seriously consider selling up (like thousands of others). Then tenants will see rents shoot through the roof. So, what I’m saying, just to be clear Mike, is that: it’s a great soundbite and panders to the popular press that this “evil” man has trampled on what might sound like a good idea. But what will happen is that all the truly awful tenants will cry “revenge eviction” and the landlords will have to prove it’s not. Do you think they will care if a landlord is unfairly tarnished? Tenants already have recourse to the Repairing Standard (in Scotland, in any case) and have plenty of rights. The landlord seems to have few and this man is fighting against them being taken away. Please, please look at both sides of an argument before you comment. Once again, the BBC and national newspapers are not reliable sources.