Social housing landlords will be given the power to evict domestic abuse perpetrators directly under a new bill, ending a system that has forced victims to flee their own homes before action can be taken against an abuser.
The legislation, which returns to the House of Lords for its second reading on Monday June 1, is intended to close what the government has called a long-standing injustice in the way social tenancies handle domestic abuse. At present, landlords in England can remove a perpetrator only after the victim has already moved out. In cases of joint tenancies, the only avenue open to the victim is to end the entire tenancy – a step that can leave them homeless.
Under the proposed changes, courts will be able to transfer a joint tenancy into the sole name of the victim or order the landlord to provide suitable alternative accommodation. The bill also closes a legal loophole that allowed abusers to deliberately end a joint tenancy early during their own eviction proceedings, effectively making the victim homeless before any court order could take effect.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said that around 15,000 families in England were forced to find a new social home last year because of domestic abuse. Nationally, an estimated 3.8 million people aged 16 and over – 7.8 per cent of that age group – experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2025, making it the third most common trigger for homelessness.
The Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA), a leading organisation endorsed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, has welcomed the measures as “an important and long overdue step forward”. DAHA has long called for reforms that allow victims to remain in their homes while the abuser is removed, rather than being forced into temporary accommodation or homelessness.
The bill also places new duties on local authorities under the framework of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which already requires councils to provide support services within safe accommodation. However, campaigners note that inconsistencies remain across local authorities, with some councils imposing “local connection” restrictions on women fleeing abuse from other areas – a practice that can block access to housing even when a tenancy transfer is granted.
Right to buy overhaul
The same piece of legislation delivers the most significant change to the Right to Buy scheme since its introduction under Margaret Thatcher’s government. Social housing tenants in England will now have to wait ten years – up from the current three – before they can purchase their home from a council or housing association.
Newly built social homes will be protected from Right to Buy sales for 35 years, and “hard-to-replace rural homes” will be exempt from the scheme entirely. Councils will also gain a stronger right of first refusal to buy back properties that have already been sold, a move intended to help public sector landlords recover homes lost under the original policy.
The Right to Buy was introduced by the Housing Act 1980 and has led to the sale of more than two million council homes in England. The social housing stock has fallen from nearly 6.5 million units in 1979 to roughly two million by 2017. Critics have long argued that the policy exacerbated the housing shortage for low-income households, contributed to a housing price bubble and led to the displacement and gentrification of communities, with a significant proportion of homes sold under Right to Buy now rented out by private landlords.
Despite a government commitment to replace each sold home, the figures tell a stark story. Between April 2012 and March 2024, more than 124,000 Right to Buy sales took place, but fewer than 48,000 replacement homes were built. The Treasury has received approximately £47 billion from Right to Buy receipts over the lifetime of the policy.
The minimum tenancy requirement has changed several times: a five-year period was introduced for new tenants after 2005, and discounts were increased again in 2012. Last year, maximum cash discount levels were cut back to pre-2012 levels, a measure the government estimates will reduce Right to Buy sales by about 25,000 over five years. The Local Government Association has backed the new ten-year qualifying period, saying it will help councils rebuild their housing stock.
The bill also strips out what the government calls “outdated and unimplemented requirements” from the 2016 Housing and Planning Act. These include rules that would have forced councils to sell high-value homes, offer fixed-term tenancies and charge higher rents to higher-income tenants – provisions that were never fully enacted and are now to be formally removed.
Campaign reactions and political support
The bill’s return to parliament has drawn widespread support from housing and domestic abuse campaigners. The Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance repeated its endorsement, stressing that the changes would give victims the security they need to remain in their homes while the legal process moves against the perpetrator.
Writing for the Guardian, Sir Keir Starmer said the current system had left “families in limbo on waiting lists for years” and that “domestic abuse survivors found themselves forced out of their homes because landlords lacked the powers to make their abuser the one who must leave”. He attributed the problems to “underfunding, systemic failure and a lack of building, particularly when it comes to social housing, where too much of the stock was sold off at huge discounts without ever being replaced”.
The government has said the bill will fix “the long-term decline in social housing” and offer new protections for social tenants. Labour has pledged the “biggest increase in social and affordable homes for a generation”, with a target of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of a parliament. Yet the scale of the challenge remains severe: 1.27 million people are currently on the social housing waiting list in England, and 117,450 households are in temporary accommodation.
The bill was announced in the King’s Speech on 13 May and will be debated in the House of Lords on Monday. Key speakers expected to participate include Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, the parliamentary under-secretary for housing, communities and local government; Lord Best, former chair of the Centre for Social Justice Housing Commission; Baroness Gill, chief executive of Newlon Housing Group; Baroness Neate, former chief executive of Shelter; and Baroness O’Neill of Bexley, vice-president of London Councils.
