Recommendation 22

Data gaps also mean the Department does not collect the information it needs to evaluate the impact of recent legislative changes. For example, in 2015 it introduced changes in the Deregulation Act to protect tenants from retaliatory eviction after raising complaints with their local authority.51 However, we heard from tenant representative bodies that these changes fails to protect tenants unless a specific enforcement tool is used, leaving many vulnerable to eviction in the wake of a complaint.52 The Department does not collect data on the reasons for evictions, the numbers of improvement notices served by local authorities or the number of complaints that lead to eviction, and is therefore unable to evaluate how effective the legislative change has been in practice.53