Last week I was down in leafy Kent, a beautiful place to be in our current heat wave but not so much fun when you are in a training room with 20 other people trying not to boil.
I was with a group of assorted officers from a range of Kent councils.
Many of our clients find it useful to partner up with neighbouring boroughs to share training costs.
I was delivering the Harassment and Illegal Eviction Toolkit a flagship course that draws on my 25 years of experience dealing solely with this kind of work for the London Borough of Lewisham where we could often get 2 or 3 illegal evictions in a single day.
I’ve been doing a version of this course for 16 years now but was only ever asked for it once or maybe twice a year but its rapidly becoming one of my regulars as delegates report a rise in incidents in their areas.
In Kent we were discussing why there should be this rise across the country. We put it down simply to the fact that there are more landlords around than there were in 1999.
Seems like a sensible solution as opposed to presuming that landlords are getting nastier.
The problem is the vast majority of landlords know little of the law and harassment, even illegal eviction can occur simply because of this ignorance. Often when tackled the landlords are horrified and stop action immediately.
Of course there are the committed and persistent offenders. That’s who the enforcement route is for.