Last year, nearly 26,000 households faced homelessness as a result of a Section 21 eviction and had to go to their council for support, according to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The wide-ranging legislation also plans to extend Awaab’s law, from social to private sector landlords.

This will require property investors, or their agents, to carry out key repairs within a specified timeframe, with the exact period likely to be decided after a consultation.

It will apply the Decent Homes Standard to the private rented sector for the first time. Currently, 21% of privately rented homes are considered non-decent and more than 500,000 contain the most serious of hazards, official figures say.

Landlords who fail to address serious hazards can be fined up to £7,000 by local councils and may face prosecution for non-compliance.

The legislation will ban “in-tenancy rent increases,” and will mean that landlords will only be allowed to raise the rent once a year, and to the market rate.

It also plans to crack down on rental bidding wars.

The government says: “Landlords and letting agents will be legally required to publish an asking rent for their property.

“They will also be banned from asking for, encouraging, or accepting any bids above this price.”

The proposed law will end blanket bans by landlords for renters on benefits or with children.

The government says the Bill is “a crucial step” towards ending Britain’s housing crisis, along with its commitment to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years.

The previous Conservative administration had steered a similar Renter’s Reform Bill through the House of Commons, but was opposed by backbench Tory MPs who were concerned about the ability of landlords to remove anti-social renters and tenants in debt from their properties through the courts.

The Bill ran out of time when the last parliament was dissolved at the end of May.

During the summer general election campaign, Labour said it would ban ‘no fault’ evictions immediately if it won power.

Conservatives first promised to ban no-fault evictions in its 2019 manifesto.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner says: “There can be no more dither and delay. We must overhaul renting and rebalance the relationship between tenant and landlord.

“This Bill will do just that and tenants can be reassured this government will protect them.”

But National Residential Landlords Association chief executive Ben Beadle points out: “The end of Section 21, ‘no explanation’ repossessions represents the biggest change to the sector for over 30 years.

“Once the Bill is passed, it is vital that sufficient time is provided to enable the sector to properly prepare.

Beadle adds: “Over 4.5 million households will need tenancy agreements updating, letting agent staff and landlords will need to undertake training and insurance and mortgage providers will need to adjust policies and rates.

“None of this will happen overnight and the government needs to publish guidance.”

British Property Federation director of policy, real estate, Ian Fletcher, adds: “Our primary concern remains the ability of the courts to deal with the increased workload that will come their way with Section 21, which is why we had taken a hard line with the previous government to secure court improvements ahead of the legislation being passed.

“We can see why the new government wants to inject new pace into reform, and it has made some reassuring commitments to continue to improve the courts.

“Without court reform and improvement, the new system won’t work well and deliver fair access to justice.”

Goodlord managing director of insurance Oli Sherlock points out one of the biggest differences between the Conservative and Labour Bills revolves around no-fault evictions.

Sherlock says: “The biggest change between the previous Renters Reform Bill and the new Renters Rights Bill will be around Section 21. “The Conservative Government offered the industry something of a fudge around the scrapping of no-fault evictions, with vague promises to introduce it once the courts were ‘ready’.”

“While we agreed with the sentiment of this, there was no timeline or action plan announced alongside. In contrast, it looks like the Labour Government will scrap Section 21 outright and the courts will need to find a way to cope.”

Vouch head of customer success Lauren Hughes highlights other differences between the Conservative and Labour parties around this “seismic piece of legislation”.

Hughes says: “Labour has already indicated that they will go further around rent increases – including ending bidding wars and challenging unfair rent increases.

“However, in a way that has become familiar over the years, we have thus far been given little detail about how they will achieve this.

“Likewise, the government has decided to take the standard of private housing further by integrating the Decent Homes Standards and Awaab’s Law.”