Section 21 Notice (again, sorry) - are there are any free form downloads out there??

silvercar

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/BenefitsTaxCreditsAndOtherSupport/On_a_low_income/DG_10018926

Try starting on the above link. It should take you to a calculator in your area.

clutton_2

i do wish i could provide you with precise legal advice, i can't - i am not a lawyer - but what i do know (from having read many articles by Tessa Sanderson - a well-known property-landlord-tenant specialist solicitor,) is that since you do NOT have a written tenancy agreement this substantially alters the type of court process your landlord can start in order to get you out.

please either go to a solicitor yourself, or join national landlords association (and tell a little porkie - claiming that you are a landlord) , in order to get the correct advice as to which form to fill in and how to fill it in.

If you fill these forms in wrongly - the court will just throw them out, your mother will have wasted £150, she will have to start the whole process all over again and you will spend at least another 2-3 months in a house that you hate.

i have come across several amateur landlords who spent months (one spent 15 months) trying to get a tenant out - all because he did not understand the court forms and kept on filling them in incorrectly.

with regards to local rents - in April all local authorities will pay the same amount of rent for each one bed property, the same amount for all two bed properties and the same amount for all three bedroom properties. This will be called Local Housing Allowance, and it is replacing Housing Benefit - so, you will know how much, in advance, you will have to spend on rent (as long as your finances mean that you qualify for housing benefit/local housing allowance). Unfortunately, the levels of LHA will not be revealed until Feb/March.

Most councils have a "bond board" which may be able to loan you the deposit to rent a private house.

good luck

blue_monkey_2

Hi Guys, again your information is really helpful.

Let me explain what I - or should I say what I am telling my Mother she HAS to do. I have the forms filled out and today we will all get them signed - she can then 'serve' them on us. This is because the cut off date is 2nd December for a rent period. I thought it was 6th but that is when she pays the mortgage, we pay the rent on 3rd. So, I thought that if they are not served now then it will mean her serving them in January. She must then take the forms, next week, to her solicitor and get advice and make sure they are correct, I will tell her to tell him/her that we have no formal written tenancy (Council woman did tell me that because of this we would be assumed as periodic in cases such as ours) and that she has served us this notice and she wants us out so she can sell the house. I guess if the solicitor asks then she can tell him that she has to do it this way because we cannot afford anything around here and the council have told us that she cannot make us leave without a court order, I guess it does not matter if the solicitor knows this, does it? He can then advise her on what is best to tell the judge I suppose, I don't like lying about stuff, you get tangled in a web of lies then. Clutton, I changed your form from saying Section 21 (1)(b) to Section 21 (4)(a) at the top of it.

She will not have to go to court until the 2 months is up and this is when she pays the court, if the form she has given us is incorrect the Solicitor should tell her next week so the worst case senario is that she has to give us a different notice sent via the solicitor to get us out in March instead. Doing it now means if it is wrong it will not make any difference than if she had served it next month after going to the solicitor, if it is correct then it will end in Feb. If it is wrong and the solicitor tells her that it is correct then surely that falls down to the solicitor being in the wrong and it is their liability?

I get the impression that she wants the money she is going to get ASAP, I can't put my finger on it you know, I wonder if she has been offered money for it already as she seems to think that it is going to be sold in days. Something else happened recently in that my sister had a completion date for her house and was moving in a few weeks, withing a week of her finding out that mum's house was going on the market she has told mum that everything has 'fallen though'. This is the sister that offered her £58 for it when it was worth £130 - she seems to think she can get it cheap from her I guess but mum has flatly refused saying it will go through proper channels. I wonder if my sister is going to say she will save x,y,z if my sister gives her cash or something. But, from my mums side there seems to be an urgency but not one that she can do anything about. I just get that impression from her body language and the way she talks about it. My younger sister lives with her and she says she cannot work out why she is selling - when she has asked her why she is doing it she has come out with 'I am worried I might lose it' and 'I can't afford to keep it'. Now both these reasons are the most obscure because she does not pay a single penny towards the house, nothing at all, the bills come out of our bank account and the money we pay her covers the mortgage and the Insurances (buildings, home, life). My sister points this out to her but she just says it is for either of the same reasons she has already said. So I don't know, I just get a funny sinking feeling about all of this and now my sister has mysteriously pulled out of her chain I just want it over with. i refuse to get involved in family politics, already half the family don't talk to us because we live here and they seem to think that if we did not then Mum would sell for next to nothing as they know she cannot afford it, I really am not getting involved now but no-one can do anything until we are gone anyway. I told her that she must put the money into a high interest account because when she retires she is going to need the money and she said 'oh yes, I can put it in my ISA'. I said no, you can't you are going to have to speak with your solicitor about all of this and put it where you can't get to it otherwise the 'thrill' of having the money is ging to mean she is going to spend, spend, spend and she is the kind of person where if I said 'mum I am short can you lend me £1000 for a new sofa' she would do it. And if I frittered that money on a holiday and asked again when I got back she would give it again and again. There are also these 2 people hanging around like a bad smell and I don't like it. I hope this does not sound like I want the money because this is not the case, just my mum is quite gullible - she used to send money off to those people who wrote and said 'you have won £2,000 send us £28 to cover our admin costs' and she would send the money off and then wondered why she was deluged by these letters. It was only because she came to me and asked me to write another cheque for her that I found out what she was doing. But that is for another board I guess. Sorry, just offloading. But yes, she is quite gullible and I would hate to think someone is taking advantage of her having the money - I guess that it is time for me not to get involved. The one thing I think I will do though is check she has not had one of those letters about a 'Spanish Lottery'. They usually ask for money up front before releasing the cash don;t they. I think I'll mention that to her.

Anyway, does what I am doing about the notice make sense? I can understand everything, we cannot afford a solicitor - at the end of the day if she wants us out that badly then she has to pay, if she makes mistakes because her solicitor has not done the job properly then that is her lookout really. If she does not need the money tomorrow then there is no need to go is there.

Can I also ask you, I know you don't know all the legal side but you might now this, when the 2 months is up and we refuse to leave, do we still pay our rent as usual? It is done by standing order. Half of me thinks yes because if they tell the judge we have not paid the rent this month he might put that on the order as to why we are leaving, the other half is that is we pay our rent and then a week later get offered a place by the council I know she is not going to give us the pro-rata back. maybe you can tell me what is the 'norm' in cases of the notice being served and what tenants usually do about the rent.

Are there any tenant boards at all that you know of?

Thanks again for spending so much time in answering me.

blue_monkey_2

Hi silvercar,

The council lady already told me that we are 'allowed' £190 a week as a family, this is what they allow for paying bills and food ect. Then out of every £100 over this we are allowed £35 to keep for ourselves.

So, if we earnt £1500 a month and the rent was £1000 and council tax £100 - we would have/get the get the following (roughly):

£800 allowance (this is to cover food and bills)
Leaves £700 'spare'. Out of this £700 we are allowed to keep £245 and the other £455 will go towards our rent AND council tax. So, HB would pay us £645 towards our rent and council tax payments.

However, if they told us after an assessment (and bear in mind they ONLY do this assessment AFTER you have found a place to live) that they think the house is overpriced and it is only worth, £700 a month, they will only give us HB is £345 and we would have to find the shortfall out of our 'allowance' they give us.

Someone pointed towards a thread running on another board and this is the situation that the lady there is in, they did not give her enough money to live on and she got into an even deeper mess when she lost her job. Have you seen that? it is long but I have read it though (all 60 pages, LOL).

I do however find it bizaare that the money they 'allow' us to live onwith benefits is £2145 a month AFTER tax (£155 wage plus £645 housing benefit) No wonder people can't be bothered to go to work if they can get this in benefits all round!! That is an annual take home pay of £25,700 which must be around a 40k annual salary. Good Grief!!!!! I have to say, after putting it here I am totally speechless - and that is a lot for me, LOL!!

silvercar

Maybe it was on Mumoftwins thread, there was a link to a website where you put in your details and it told you how many rooms you would be entitled to, then you cross referenced that to a table that gave, for each area, the amount of HB that would be given for that number of rooms. So if you were entitled to 4 rooms that may equal £800 HB in Watford but £750 in Stevenage etc. Those figures were all meant for full HB entitlement, but it would give you the starting point for your circumstances.

clutton wrote:

with regards to local rents - in April all local authorities will pay the same amount of rent for each one bed property, the same amount for all two bed properties and the same amount for all three bedroom properties. This will be called Local Housing Allowance, and it is replacing Housing Benefit - so, you will know how much, in advance, you will have to spend on rent (as long as your finances mean that you qualify for housing benefit/local housing allowance). Unfortunately, the levels of LHA will not be revealed until Feb/March.

Presumably that would be restricted to the number of bedrooms you are entitled to, so if you find yourself a 3 bed house but are only entitled to 2, the HB will give you the 2 bed amount and you top-up more??

I agree with all your previous post, you continue paying the rent to avoid charges of intentional homelessness and your mum will need to go to court to evict you if you want council housing.

Clutton's point about the council providing a bond for people who can't afford housing is a good one - investigate this. With a council backed bond you won't need a deposit and with the new tenant deposit scheme it reduces the landlords paperwork.

zzzLazyDaisy

Hi, have just had a quick read through this. I am a lawyer, but don't specialise in property law, so can only give you basic info:

1. if you do not have a written tenancy agreement you can forget about assured shortholds (AST) and anything connected with them. You DO NOT have an AST, and if your mother goes down that route the case will be thrown out, she will have lost the court fees and will have to start again.

2. You must continue to pay your rent while all this is going on, otherwise you will be deemed intentionally homeless. You mother's solicitor may advise her to refuse the rent, in which case you should open a separate account (a holding account) and pay the rent into it religiously as if you were paying rent to your mother. You can then produce a bank statement to show that the money is there, but that she won't accept it (don't use an internet bank for this because some LA's will only accept traditional paper statements)

3. I STRONGLY advise you not to help or advise your mother any further. Evictions have become much simpler since AST's were introduced and people have forgotten how complicated the 'old' court process was. It is incredibly easy (and expensive) to mess it up. Your mother needs a solicitor to handle this for her. It may mean she misses the December date, but better that than having to start again months down the line.

Please don't get embroiled any further. You are out of your depth. I am a lawyer, but I wouldn't deal with this one - I'd pass it onto a solicitor who knows about these things.

Good luck :-))