How to sue a landlord for harassment & info. r.e. a section 8 please!

caela_2

Hump wrote: »

So I think the OP wanted to know how she should approach the legal bits, and having spent the last 30 minutes of my life reading the thread (which I'll never get back) I think he/ she is after the following:

Regardless of whether all 4 people signed one 'joint' tenancy or whether they all had individual tenancies it appears the landlord may not have given the OP a copy of his/her/their agreement - s47-48 of the Landlord & Tenant Act 1987 may come into effect here, meaning no rent payable until or unless the landlord provides an address for the service of notices etc (and on demands for rent etc).

Now onto the unlawful eviction - the landlord appears to have changed the locks on one (or was it 2 doors) - certainly one (or maybe 2) person(s) has (have) been deprived of their home. Now I believe (and I may be wrong) that the person deprived of their accommodation (the useless sounding former mate) would be the one who would need to progress the action under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 either by complaining to the local housing authority or by undertaking their own action (same for s27 Housing Act 1988 - though this would be a personal case - the council wouldn't do this). Though the acts do provide comfort for the remaining tenants or joint tenants because 'trying' to evict them is also covered. So the OP either needs to bring their own prosecution or persuade the local housing authority to do so - and no personal criticism here, he/she/they probably need to agree a brief resume so as not to confuse the TRO (tenancy relations officer). The relevant court here in the first instance is the magistrates court (though it may proceed to crown court). For s27 (HA 1988) claims the relevant court is the county court (it's the s27 claim that would result in damages being awarded if the case were proven - but is the one the council won't get involved in - probably).

As regards the section 8 notice, the OP needs to carefully read the notice from start to finish to ensure every statutory requirement is met i.e. every blank space on the standard form is completed, including the full wording of every ground from schedule 2 which is being relied upon. The simple way to challenge the section 8 notice is to sit tight and await the court hearing and then go along and defend him/her/themselves. Again the relevant court here is the county court.

Of course the best readily available resource for this is the Shelter website.

You, my friend, are a God send. Thank-you for answering my question, it means a lot to me, we've really been struggling with this. To clarify for everyone I wasn't trying to be rude, I was just fed up of judgemental comments which I already asked be avoided since we are in a stressful enough situation as it is and I only want some advice on the legal issues, as this poster has kindly provided.

I know my massive thread was boring and long and did mention and apologise for this, but as you can see there is a lot of information. To clarify, the landlord has withheld our contracts, so as far as I can remember, it was an AST for 6 months which he has agreed we can leave before the end of. It was written on the contract that it was a joint tenancy agreement, but the landlord had a separate section about paying rent and it was detailed at £240 per room (although we had agreed and paid for the rooms at £225, he didn't want the other housemates to see our lower price and just put £240 whilst accepting our offer of £225). Hopefully this makes sense, but as I've tried to highlight, the landlord has made every attempt to do things underhandedly so that he can evict people whenever he wants (as he believes) whilst content in the fact that only he has the contract and therefore, any rights to action. This, obviously, is untrue but demonstrates his nature perfectly.

People didn't seem to understand my original post when they were telling me to pay up and leave which would have been in mutual agreement with us and the landlord. This is not true- we have arranged to leave and have found a new place BUT we are refusing to pay outstanding rent because we have literally not had one moment's enjoyment of the property- despite paying for it. It was only when his harassment started BEFORE we owed him rent, that we decided to be cautious in wasting our money with this maniac. We are looking to sue him for harassment, detailing our financial loss as the loss of rent for a property we had restricted use of, which had been misrepresented to us and which the landlord continually accessed without notice. Other financial loss was the include the flooding of raw sewage into the kitchens and bathrooms, as I previously mentioned and compensation for the stress we have suffered, which is applicable under the Protection from Harassment Act. My main query overall had been how to initiate these legal proceedings so that we could get our money back and how to avoid a Section 8 which is probably erroneous but which might have us evicted or due to pay him rent. He has addressed this section 8 to everyone in the house, even those who are not behind on 2 month's rent (the 3rd housemate).

It's a confusing and mind boggling (mostly boring) matter which I can sympathise with most as I'm going through it and only wasting more brain cells on the matter everyday as our landlord thinks up new ways to drive us all mad.

debtfreeby2013

As far as the legal eviction advice try here for a local advisor:
Shelter Cymru - Advice Near You

Depending on your circumstances they may be able to advise or even act on your behalf.

caela_2

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

I suspect the OP has some fantasy that because they don't understand what an HMO is and the landlord's right to enter the property they have an idea that all financial obligations can be ignored and a very satisfactory financial settlement could come their way. All completely and utterly without any foundation.

OP: just pay the rent you owe and get out of there. If I were your landlord and I had a tenant in there who defaulted on their rent I'd also be bloody furious that you let him sleep in the sitting-room. If you were so concerned about your friend they should have been sleeping with the cats in the second room you were paying for but not using.

You could have easily explained what an HMO was, as I said in my original post, I wasn't sure about the landlord's right to access the building. However, he has come round without notice and entered people's rooms at the same time and also, we have caught him coming round when we're not in as we've later found evidence. Even if he was allowed in the communal areas without notice, he is not allowed to try to lock up the lounge as it is part of our rental agreement and counts as illegal eviction (from part of the property). Thank-you for inadvertently pointing me towards definitions of HMO's so that I can get a better case for suing him.

Also, we were using the room at the time, to house the cats. It is no longer in use as the cats are in our room. There was no furniture in the room, we are not obliged to pay rent on behalf of this guy, neither should he be fully evicted from a property without the proper legal procedures being followed as this is an illegal eviction. We are not allowed to tell him to leave the property and are not going to churn out someone who actually has a right to remain in the property- having defaulted into an AST by practice of paying rent for a room, regardless of having signed a contract or not.

caela_2

debtfreeby2013 wrote: »

As far as the legal eviction advice try here for a local advisor:
Shelter Cymru - Advice Near You

Depending on your circumstances they may be able to advise or even act on your behalf.

Heya,

Cheers for that, I have spoken to Shelter before but I'm going to give them another call I think because they're probably the best people to talk to. x

debtfreeby2013

caela wrote: »

Heya,

Cheers for that, I have spoken to Shelter before but I'm going to give them another call I think because they're probably the best people to talk to. x

Sounds like the best thing. If you take your tenancy agreement and the notice the LL served you with then they should be able to advise/assist.
IMO though, you need to be careful trying to sue if you owe rent arrears, it may be that they'll look at it as tit for tat and cancel each other out. I would suggest paying any rent due and you will be more likely to get a damages claim (I'm in no way legally trained but have had advice a few times with regards to rogue LL).

Out of interest, what area of Wales are you?

caela_2

debtfreeby2013 wrote: »

Sounds like the best thing. If you take your tenancy agreement and the notice the LL served you with then they should be able to advise/assist.
IMO though, you need to be careful trying to sue if you owe rent arrears, it may be that they'll look at it as tit for tat and cancel each other out. I would suggest paying any rent due and you will be more likely to get a damages claim (I'm in no way legally trained but have had advice a few times with regards to rogue LL).

Out of interest, what area of Wales are you?

Heya,

I was thinking if it would strengthen my case that perhaps I should pay the outstanding rent, but I don't want to risk losing that money as well if that makes sense. I think you're right though, the only real way to proceed would be to go to Shelter or someone else for legal advice and really look at whether or not we have a case. I know it looks like tit for tat, but hopefully there is some way we can show we've been displeased with the way he's treated us for a while now and that can be proven with evidence from the council who even had to write to him on our behalf to tell him to end his harassment or he could face jail or court. Thanks for your advice. x

caela_2

Right, I may owe some people a bit of an apology, I get a bit furious on these threads! In hindsight, some of you were right regarding various issues- the HMO for example and entering into communal areas. However, our excuse of a tenancy agreement (will explain later) stated the ll would give 24 hours notice before entering the house.

So this tenancy agreement we find now, not having the knowledge at the time because the landlord withheld the contract (which we later got off our housemate), is a bit of a farce. Basically, it all fell into place recently where we realised what he'd been up to. The council had taken us to court over the council tax for that property and in court, advised us that they actually believed (from the way we described it) that the property was an HMO (which I now know it was). The landlord however had printed off a generic AST which looked like it was supposed to be between 1 tenant and 1 LL. I know a joint AST can be drawn up, with several names of tenants who are all jointly responsible for rent (understandably, this caused some confusion with previous posts where I did not know at the time what sort of contract we had for various reasons). Sooo... we were told by him we pay per room per month as we did not know the other housemate and also, some of the rooms hadn't been taken yet. So we didn't want to pay for the whole house, obviously. The ll puts this on the front page of the contract, saying per room, per month, per person for the rent.

OK.... this is where it starts falling into place. The council recently get back in contact with me, saying they've received the contract from the LL and we are liable for the rent. It becomes clear we're not looking at the same contract. The council send me a copy and I see the LL had removed and replaced the front page to say it's a joint several AST. It was not and thanks to our housemate we had the original. So, this it appears, is why this lying so and so didn't give us our contract to start with but only gave one to the student of the house- he wanted us to foot the council tax for his HMO and knowing the student wouldn't be involved, risked providing her with a contract after much hassle. So this is where a lot of the confusion comes from- it was very hard to know what the hell was going on with this guy and where you stood, he was constantly moving the goal posts. Should have just done it right to start with. Yes, we entered into bad circumstances where we couldn't pay, but we tried everything to make arrangements and he wouldn't have it. Turns out, the property wasn't licenced as an HMO so we couldn't get Housing Benefit as he didn't want them seeing the contracts, etc. so we couldn't pay him and he just wanted to evict us straight away. There was no deposit in a scheme, just 2 month's rent up front, so at this point, we weren't even in arrears.

He was just trying to be sly and do everything in his own favour, but turned out for the worse. Also private sector housing served an improvement notice on him for the sewage problem because it was a hazzard. Maybe now people might understand why we want our money back lol!

Oh yeah and to add to it, he put all the utility bills in my name at first, I moved them back into his, then he put them in all our names- however- we're not even responsible for those in an HMO cos he should have been paying for communal areas! Also, even though he was made to get a licence, much of the property didn't comply with HMO regulations, in which case if it had, he would have been able to control the utilities to the communal areas and split the rest accordingly. I think most people just include it in the rent, which was high enough to cover it. What a cheeky g*t!

GDB2222

The two months up front lark has been stopped. The deposit has to be secured.

caela_2

GDB2222 wrote: »

The two months up front lark has been stopped. The deposit has to be secured.

Exactly. I guess at the time it went in our favour cos no deposit for him to try to steal (not that he would have put it in a scheme anyway) and at least we didn't have to drum up the extra money. He tried to say the 2 month's covered the first and last month's rent and that there was no deposit, so if anything only he could lose out. Which, ironically, he did. Should have just used a scheme I guess.