‘No-one talks about rogue tenants’ – landlord campaigner tells The Neg

Craig Littlejohn, who is behind a petition to Parliament calling for greater landlord protections, wants an "expedited court process" for evictions.

Landlord Craig Littlejohn has explained to The Neg why he started a petition calling for “greater protection” for landlords and an “expedited court process” for evictions.

Littlejohn, who calls himself an “accidental landlord”, only rents out one property in his native Scotland, but is experiencing severe problems with a tenant who has stopped paying rent.

And his petition on the Parliament website (main picture) has clearly struck a chord, collecting more than 10,000 signatures in just over two weeks, which is a figure requiring a response from the Government.

If the petition manages to achieve 100,000 names, then it triggers a parliamentary debate.

They are giving us no protection at all.”

“There are a lot of good landlords out there,” he told The Neg, and “they are giving us no protection at all.”

He says the Renters’ Rights Act, which comes into force in May, is “giving tenants more and more rights”.

“No-one talks about ‘rogue tenants’, and I’m just trying to protect the good landlords.”

The RAF serviceman was reposted from Fife to Oxfordshire a few years ago, prompting the decision to rent out his four-bedroom house.

And he is now owed more than £7,000 in overdue rent, with a wait of 12 months for his eviction application to be processed by the courts in Glasgow.

The petition says: “We urgently need an expedited court process for mandatory grounds (ASB/arrears), a vetting database for repeat offenders, and a higher deposit cap to help sustain the rental market.”

You can sign the petition here

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