Mortgage Holidays have been offered to Homeowners affected by Coronavirus

If you are experiencing financial difficulties meeting your mortgage repayments because of COVID-19, you may be entitled to a mortgage holiday for 3 months. This includes if you are a landlord whose tenants are experiencing financial difficulties because of COVID-19. The government advice is summarised below:

• Mortgage lenders will offer repayment holidays of 3 months to households in financial difficulty due to COVID-19
• This will also apply to landlords whose tenants are experiencing financial difficulties because of COVID-19
• Emergency legislation will be taken forward to prevent landlords from starting proceedings to evict tenants for at least a 3 month period
• At the end of this period, landlords and tenants will be expected to work together to establish an affordable repayment plan, taking into account tenants’ individual circumstances – this is of significant concern and must be addressed

Labour has called for this to be extended and have published a five-point plan to protect people from eviction:

1. Extend the temporary ban on evictions for six months or however long is needed to implement the legal changes below.
2. Give residential tenants the same protections as commercial tenants, by protecting them from being made bankrupt by their landlords for non-payment of rent.
3. Bring forward the government’s proposal to scrap Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions and outlaw evictions on the grounds of rent arrears if the arrears were accrued because of hardship caused by the coronavirus crisis.
4. Once evictions are prevented, grant renters at least two years to pay back any arrears accrued during this period.
5. Speed up and improve the provision of Universal Credit, as Labour recently called for, and consider a temporary increase to the Local Housing Allowance to help prevent risk of homelessness.