housing and living standards · the national record
Evictions: possession claims and council housing waiting lists
Landlords brought 91,092 possession claims through the county courts of England and Wales in 2025 and county court bailiffs carried out 29,067 repossessions, while 1,340,527 households were on council housing waiting lists in England. This page follows the possession process from claim to bailiff repossession, the split between the accelerated section 21 route and standard landlord claims, mortgage possessions, and where in the country the pressure is greatest.
How to read this
Claims, orders, warrants and repossessions are four separate stages of the same county court process, not four different totals to add together. A single case can appear at more than one stage, often in a later quarter than it started, so this page never sums them into one number. Court action is also not the same as total evictions: many tenancies end when a landlord serves notice and a tenant leaves without ever going to court, so these figures understate the true number of people losing a home.
Computed from Ministry of Justice, Mortgage and landlord possession statistics: January to March 2026, and MHCLG, Live table 600. England and Wales for possessions, England only for housing registers.
The headline
91,092 landlord claims, 29,067 repossessions in 2025
Landlords issued 91,092 possession claims in the county courts of England and Wales in 2025, 18 per cent lower than the 110,907 claims in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. Separately during 2025, courts issued 42,488 warrants for possession, a different measure counted independently rather than a running total of the year's claims, and county court bailiffs carried out 29,067 repossessions, 6 per cent lower than the 30,813 repossessions in 2019. Separately, 1,340,527 households were on a council housing register in England at the end of 2025, up 16 per cent on the 1,160,261 in 2019.
The possession process
Four stages, not four totals
A landlord possession case moves through up to four stages in the county court: a claim is issued, the court may make an order for possession, a warrant asks a bailiff to enforce it, and a repossession is the bailiff actually taking back the property. Each bar below counts cases reaching that stage during the year, not a running total, so the bars are not meant to add up. Fewer cases reach each later stage because landlords settle, tenants leave before enforcement, or the case does not proceed.
Landlord possession stages, England and Wales, 2025
Each bar counts cases reaching that stage during 2025. They are separate stages of the same process, not a running total, so the bars should not be added together.
Landlord possession claims, England and Wales, calendar years 2015 to 2025. Claims fell sharply in 2020 and 2021, when courts suspended most possession action during the pandemic, then partially recovered. Source: Ministry of Justice, Table 4.
Who is bringing the claim
Social landlord claims have fallen from most of the total to just over a third
The accelerated procedure, available under section 21 for assured shorthold tenancies, was 28,595 claims in 2025, 31 per cent of the total. The Ministry of Justice notes that accelerated claims cannot be split between private and social landlords, so they are shown as their own category here. Standard procedure claims by private landlords were 28,773 (32 per cent) and by social landlords, meaning local authorities and housing associations, 33,724 (37 per cent). In 2019, social landlords brought 61 per cent of all claims; that share has fallen sharply since, while accelerated and private landlord claims have both grown as a share of the total.
Claims, 2025
Repossessions by bailiffs, 2025
Social landlord claims were 61 per cent of the total in 2019 and are 37 per cent in 2025. Source: Ministry of Justice, Tables 4 and 7.
Mortgage possessions
A smaller, separate track from landlord possessions
Mortgage lenders brought 23,946 possession claims in 2025, compared with 25,580 in 2019, and county court bailiffs repossessed 4,646 mortgaged properties, close to the 4,929 in 2019. Mortgage possessions run through the same county courts as landlord possessions but are a separate, much smaller process, driven by arrears on a home loan rather than the end of a tenancy.
Mortgage possession actions in the county courts, England and Wales, calendar years. Source: Ministry of Justice, Table 1.
Where possession rates are highest
Local authority repossession rates, England and Wales, 2025
These rates are not published by the Ministry of Justice. They are derived here by dividing each area's 2025 repossessions by households in the relevant tenure from the 2021 Census, the last full count of households by area and tenure for England and Wales. The Ministry of Justice's own area rate methodology, described in its supporting documentation, uses the same principle, tenure specific household denominators rather than all households, which this page follows.
Highest overall rate, per 100,000 households
Highest private landlord rate, per 1,000 renting households
Repossessions by county court bailiffs in 2025 per household in the relevant tenure at the 2021 Census, across 317 matched local authority areas. Derived by the British Resilience Index; not a Ministry of Justice figure. See caveats below.
Council housing waiting lists
1,340,527 households on housing registers in England
1,340,527 households were on a local authority housing register in England at the end of 2025, up 16 per cent on the 1,160,261 recorded in 2019. Registers fell through most of the 2010s after the Localism Act 2011 let councils set their own qualification rules, then began climbing again from 2020.
Households on local authority housing registers, England, 2011 to 2025. Source: MHCLG, Live table 600.
Highest number of households, 2025
Households on local authority housing registers, England, 2025, across 296 authorities. Registers are set by each council's own qualification rules; see caveats below.
Questions this raises
For evictions and housing registers
- 1.
Landlord possession claims are lower than before the pandemic, but the mix has shifted from mostly social landlords towards private landlords and the accelerated section 21 route. What does that shift mean for the households affected?
- 2.
The Renters Rights Act received royal assent in October 2025 and its key changes took effect on 1 May 2026, after the period covered by this data. The next quarterly release, covering April to June 2026, will be the first to show any effect on the figures.
- 3.
Court action captures only possessions that reach a county court. How many more tenancies end through informal notice, with no case ever filed, and so never appear in these statistics?
- 4.
Council housing waiting lists in England have risen 16 per cent since 2019, even as the criteria councils use to decide who qualifies for a register continue to vary and change. How much of the rise reflects more housing need, and how much reflects those local rule changes?
Related analysis
Sources & method
Data provenance
- Mortgage and landlord possession statistics: January to March 2026 (Ministry of Justice) ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
- Mortgage and landlord possession statistics: collection (Ministry of Justice) ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
- Live tables on rents, lettings and tenancies, Live table 600 (MHCLG) ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
- Census 2021: TS054 Tenure of household (Office for National Statistics) ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
Caveats & data notes
- Claims, orders, warrants and repossessions are separate stages counted independently in each quarter, not a cohort followed through to an outcome. A case reaching a later stage may have started in an earlier quarter, so the four figures should never be added together or read as shares of one another.
- These are county court actions, not a count of every household that loses its home. Many tenancies end when a landlord serves notice and a tenant leaves, or a household reaches an informal agreement, without any claim ever being issued in court. The true number of people losing a home is higher than these figures show.
- The accelerated procedure, the route used for section 21 no fault possession claims, cannot be split between private and social landlords in the published statistics, so it is shown as its own category rather than folded into either landlord type.
- The Renters Rights Act 2025 received royal assent on 27 October 2025. Its key changes, including the planned end of section 21 no fault evictions in England, took effect on 1 May 2026, after the latest quarter in this data (January to March 2026). This page describes the law and the data as they stood in that quarter; it does not attempt to predict how the figures will move once later quarters are published.
- Possession statistics cover England and Wales. The council housing waiting list figures on this page cover England only; comparable waiting list data for Wales and Scotland is not part of the same MHCLG series.
- The number of households on a council housing register depends on each council's own qualification rules and how often it reviews its list. The Localism Act 2011 let councils set their own criteria, contributing to a fall in recorded numbers after 2011; some councils, including Telford and Wrekin since 2021, no longer maintain a register at all, recorded here as zero. A household can also appear on more than one council's register. Area comparisons and the national trend should be read with this in mind.
- Local authority possession rates on this page are derived by the British Resilience Index, dividing 2025 repossessions by 2021 Census households in the relevant tenure; they are not published by the Ministry of Justice. The private landlord rate excludes areas with fewer than 1,000 privately renting households at the 2021 Census, to avoid small denominators producing volatile rates.
- A small number of claims each year cannot be assigned to a local authority ('Not Identified' in the source data; 293 repossessions nationally in 2025) and are excluded from the area tables, though they are included in the national totals.
- Local authority areas that merged into new unitary councils between the 2021 Census and 2025, namely Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness, North Yorkshire and Somerset, are matched here by combining their 2021 Census predecessor districts; this is a British Resilience Index calculation, not a published census figure for the new areas.
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