Serviced notice pursuant to section 21 of the housing act!

digitalphase

Hi everyone, hope someone can give me some advise It's a bit of a long one, but will condense it as much as I can, then if you need anymore clarification I will go into it later.

We moved into our current cottage April 2010. We signed up for an Assured Tenancy Agreement, which was for two years at the same rent, but could be broken/ended after one year's tenancy.

When we first moved in we were pretty happy. Baring in mind it was coming into summer. The garden is large, and the cottage remote, which is what attracted us to it from the start, moving away from a large town.

As the weather started to cool, more and more problems surfaced. Various structural problems, including damp, and the private sewerage system. All of these problems fall under the landlord's obligations under duty of repair.

I have condensed this down, as think I gave a little too much information before.

So, anyway, we went to CAB in October as we were sick of living in this place with all this stuff wrong with it, plus paying a premium, this isn't some cheap place. Also the length of time it took for them to send someone out, and then the job would be carried out poorly or not at all. Basically they told us we had no rights, but to send the landlord a letter recorded delivery outlining all the problems. An agent came around after full of promises to fix things, but things were not done. We had told them how unhappy we were in the hope that this would get them to act on the problems, and encourage us to stay. The property had been empty over 6mths before we rented it.

So, today we have received two copies of the same letter, saying about this notice and due to the clause in our agreement where we can end it after 12 months. This gives us until mid April to find somewhere else to live. They are aware I am pregnant, which is another reason for the level of disgust at the way we have been treated with regards to the damp etc.

Now, we definitely want to move, but haven't found anywhere yet. Our baby is due in May, so ideally we want to be out by March at the latest, however we don't want to feel pushed out and have to rush into another house where we will be unhappy.

My question, after all this waffling, is can they chuck us out after April, if we still haven't found anywhere? Baring in mind we have ALWAYS paid the rent on time, they have a large deposit of ours, and we are very good tenants. It is obviously because of all the problems we've had that they want us out rather than to fix them. The whole outside wall needs replacing, the man who was sent to investigate the damp told us. There is actually water running down this wall from the inside. So a lot of money needs spending here, but they won't do it.

Also, how does this stand regarding a reference? Surely they can't refuse to give us one due to us complaining about the problems in the house? This is not our fault at all, every problem there is has been there since before we moved in.

I hope someone can help, and sorry for waffling.

evoke

So you want to have your cake and eat it too? LOL.

You've already admitted you want to move. Now the owner is asking you to move and you don't want to because you want to find a place to move to first. You should have found a place first and then told the landlord you'll be moving.

And would women of child-bearing age PLEASE STOP using pregnancy as emotional blackmail in threads. Everything is black and white in the murky cesspit of property.

digitalphase

evoke wrote: »

So you want to have your cake and eat it too? LOL.

You've already admitted you want to move. Now the owner is asking you to move and you don't want to because you want to find a place to move to first. You should have found a place first and then told the landlord you'll be moving.

And would women of child-bearing age PLEASE STOP using pregnancy as emotional blackmail in threads. Everything is black and white in the murky cesspit of property.

Obviously we need to find a place to move to first. We have been looking for months.

The questions were regarding a rolling month-by-month contract if we haven't found anywhere by April, and also about references. If you don't know the answer, or have nothing helpful to say, why bother posting.

I am not using pregnancy as emotional blackmail, what a silly thing to say. The fact is I am pregnant, that is black and white as well.

Jowo_2

Assuming the S21 notice is valid and has been correctly served, then if you ignore it, the landlord must take you to court to gain possession of the property if you do not leave of your volition.

The Shelter website will explain the entire eviction process. The following info applies to England/Wales but Shelter also has pages for other areas.

If the property is in England/Wales, do you know if the landlord has lodged your deposit in a tenancy deposit scheme?

Basically, the day after the notice expires, the landlord can apply to the local courts to initiate the possession process. Depending on local court waiting times, this may take anything from a few weeks to a month plus for the court hearing. If the notice has been correctly served, the judge has no discretion and must award possession to the landlord and the tenant will be given the date in which they have to leave. An S21 is informally known as a 'no fault notice' - you cannot use the lack of repairs or your pregnancy to overturn it but you can ask for extra time before the PO takes effect.

If the judge permits extra time, the tenants will get a few more weeks before they have to leave. If the tenants ignore the possession order, the landlord has to return back to the court to request bailiffs. Again, depending on their workload, this could take a few weeks. Bailiffs are the end of the road. If the tenants refuse to leave, the police will escort them out.

Sadly, some landlords would prefer to serve notice on tenants rather than comply with their obligations to repair the property.

evoke

digitalphase wrote: »

I am not using pregnancy as emotional blackmail, what a silly thing to say. The fact is I am pregnant, that is black and white as well.

And what has you being pregnant got to do with the S21 notice? Exactly nothing.

You (and others on here) use pregnancy to sway opinion and elicit sympathy. That is a fact.

digitalphase

Jowo wrote: »

Assuming the S21 notice is valid and has been correctly served, then if you ignore it, the landlord must take you to court to gain possession of the property if you do not leave of your volition.

The Shelter website will explain the entire eviction process. The following info applies to England/Wales but Shelter also has pages for other areas.

If the property is in England/Wales, do you know if the landlord has lodged your deposit in a tenancy deposit scheme?

Basically, the day after the notice expires, the landlord can apply to the local courts to initiate the possession process. Depending on local court waiting times, this may take anything from a few weeks to a month plus for the court hearing. If the notice has been correctly served, the judge has no discretion and must award possession to the landlord and the tenant will be given the date in which they have to leave. An S21 is informally known as a 'no fault notice' - you cannot use the lack of repairs or your pregnancy to overturn it but you can ask for extra time before the PO takes effect.

If the judge permits extra time, the tenants will get a few more weeks before they have to leave. If the tenants ignore the possession order, the landlord has to return back to the court to request bailiffs. Again, depending on their workload, this could take a few weeks. Bailiffs are the end of the road. If the tenants refuse to leave, the police will escort them out.

Sadly, some landlords would prefer to serve notice on tenants rather than comply with their obligations to repair the property.

Thanks very much for your post, Jowo.

They have sent us one letter by normal mail, and another the same which was hand delivered. It has a part on there where they want us to sign to agree to this. Do we keep one copy? I wanted to ask on here before signing anything.

We are more than willing to go once we find a new place, but think it unfair to be chucked out when we have done nothing wrong. If we were aware of this then we would have started serious viewings of other properties a few more months ago.

Do you know what will happen with regards to references? We can always get one from our old house if not. We left that house in better condition than when we moved in, so will get a good reference. We always pay our rent on time and have kept to all terms in our agreement.

Oh and yes the deposit is in a tenancy deposit scheme. Our property is in England.

Brb

Re reference, do use the old one. It should hold more water with a potential LL than a reference from a current LL anyway (LL can give glowing reference to a T from hell purely because they want rid of them).

Check rightmove daily, ask about. Visit your high street and look in shop windows, check newspapers etc (hell I even put a message on fb and someone I went to junior school with had an empty house, unfortunately too far for me but you never know!).

evoke. Whilst I agree that being pregnant does not matter a jot in the business dealings of lettings. It is normal to mention this and not actually be asking for sympathy but give a better picture of needs for advice. I do wish you would stop expressing your apparent unhappiness at women getting pregnant, we've being doing it for generations haha.

For example my advice, with OP being pregnant is that you milk that for all you can with her partner. Ie, he does the packing, lifting of boxes etc and merely points and says "I want that there".

Even if you did start looking months ago you could not have moved then anyway (well you could have but you would have had to find 2 rents to pay at once). You could find a property advertised tomorrow and move a week later. It's possibly a little early now as potential LL may not want to leave a property empty for you to move in April.

You need to certainly tighten your belts (eat beans on toast if necessary) to ensure you have funds to secure a property that you may not be able to move into until April, the deposit, month up front, fees etc (all of which hurt I know!).

Good luck

Edit: PS. You don't need to sign to say you've received a S21, the onus is on them to prove service by a particular date if they need to go to court for a PO. A lot of S21s issued by LLs/LA and even solicitors are invalid. Reasons a S21 is invalid is: deposit not protected and T not given prescribed information, incorrect dates (they need to tie in with your AST) and finally it has to say it's seeking possession after xx/xx/xx. If it doesn't say "after" it is then invalid.

digitalphase

evoke wrote: »

And what has you being pregnant got to do with the S21 notice? Exactly nothing.

You (and others on here) use pregnancy to sway opinion and elicit sympathy. That is a fact.

Well, they already think it OK for a pregnant woman to be in a house that is suffering from extensive damp problems, so indeed, why should that affect the S21 notice. That was sarcasm by the way. I am not looking for sympathy, just would like to know what my legal position is.

You miss the point to my post, which incidently isn't the fact that I am pregnant, and are unable to answer my questions. No matter, there are helpful members on the forum like Jowo.

You obviously have too much time on your hands to be replying to people's posts about subjects you know nothing about.

digitalphase

Brb wrote: »

Re reference, do use the old one. It should hold more water with a potential LL than a reference from a current LL anyway (LL can give glowing reference to a T from hell purely because they want rid of them).

Check rightmove daily, ask about. Visit your high street and look in shop windows, check newspapers etc (hell I even put a message on fb and someone I went to junior school with had an empty house, unfortunately too far for me but you never know!).

evoke. Whilst I agree that being pregnant does not matter a jot in the business dealings of lettings. It is normal to mention this and not actually be asking for sympathy but give a better picture of needs for advice. I do wish you would stop expressing your apparent unhappiness at women getting pregnant, we've being doing it for generations haha.

For example my advice, with OP being pregnant is that you milk that for all you can with her partner. Ie, he does the packing, lifting of boxes etc and merely points and says "I want that there".

Even if you did start looking months ago you could not have moved then anyway (well you could have but you would have had to find 2 rents to pay at once). You could find a property advertised tomorrow and move a week later. It's possibly a little early now as potential LL may not want to leave a property empty for you to move in April.

You need to certainly tighten your belts (eat beans on toast if necessary) to ensure you have funds to secure a property that you may not be able to move into until April, the deposit, month up front, fees etc (all of which hurt I know!).

Good luck

Thanks Brb

You understand why I mentioned I was pregnant, and it was not in anyway designed to get a sympathy vote. I just wanted to know my, well our me and OH's, legal position.

Just seems to be a case of bad timing really, but we really do not want to be in this house when baby arrives. The room that we earmarked as a nursery is infested with flies, not an environment suitable for a baby. Or will I be accused by trying to get the sympathy vote again by saying this?

We are checking RM daily, anything decent seems to be gobbled up very quickly. We'll just have to keep trying until we find somewhere.

We will ask our old landlord for a reference next time then, thanks again Brb.

The silly thing about this place is it's bound to stand empty again for another how-ever-many-months once we go, and even though we do want to go, we don't see what the rush is. They obviously don't want to spend money on the repairs it desperately needs.
We were going to give them 2 months notice anyway that we were looking to vacate, and to continue the agreement on a month by month basis. Oh well, another lesson learned!

Jowo_2

digitalphase wrote: »

..We were going to give them 2 months notice anyway that we were looking to vacate, and to continue the agreement on a month by month basis. Oh well, another lesson learned!

But if you serve notice, assuming its valid, then you end the tenancy! It doesn't turn it into a periodic tenancy. Periodic tenancies automatically happen at the end of the fixed term of the agreement if the tenant remains in situ and doesn't sign a new one. You cannot 'create' a periodic tenancy by triggering a break clause...

Do you simply mean that you were also planning to remain in the property if you had triggered the break-clause, in the same way that you also plan to remain in it now the landlord has if it's not convenient for you to move?!

digitalphase

Jowo wrote: »

But if you serve notice, assuming its valid, then you end the tenancy! It doesn't turn it into a periodic tenancy. Periodic tenancies automatically happen at the end of the fixed term of the agreement if the tenant remains in situ and doesn't sign a new one. You cannot 'create' a periodic tenancy by triggering a break clause...

Do you simply mean that you were also planning to remain in the property if you had triggered the break-clause, in the same way that you also plan to remain in it now the landlord has if it's not convenient for you to move?!

Oh we thought it went to month by month after we'd been here a year. We were going to give them as much notice as possible as I had read somewhere you should do this was AST? Then continue paying month by month. Obviously got it wrong.

We do NOT plan to remain in the property, we absolutely HATE the house. The question I asked originally was - can they chuck us out after April, and this has been answered that yes, they can. Fair enough. We want to go anyway, but I am in a panic that we haven't found anywhere yet, that's all. We still have two months though, so hopefully something will turn up.