The return of normal rental rules?

Are we seeing light at the end of the tunnel? It might not be ‘business as usual’ for landlords just yet, but according to Anna Pettinger, we’re well on the way to the return of normal rental rules…

I need to serve notice on my tenants. How long do I have to give them?

As the vaccination rollout snowballs and we are hopefully approaching the end of lockdown restrictions, notice periods for tenants have reduced, much to the relief of landlords.

However, there has been much confusion in the past few weeks about the length of notice to which tenants are entitled.

At the beginning of this month, notice periods for Section 21 and Section 8 forms were cut to four months, or four weeks in situations where the tenants are at least four months in arrears. On August 1, this will drop again to two months.

New forms were also implemented on June 1, although the Section 8 was only updated two weeks prior. Unfortunately, failure to use them can render the notice invalid. This has caught out landlords and even some law firms, who prepared forms in advance and served them after the beginning of June.

If you have given your tenants notice recently, it is worth double checking you used the correct form.

If my tenant won’t leave, will I have a long wait for a possession order?

Although landlords can be reassured that notice periods are reducing, making the initial stages of the eviction process quicker, this relief will be short lived if the tenant doesn’t leave.

The courts are facing an enormous backlog of cases and it is estimated there are approximately 100,000 possession claims to be processed over the next 12 months.

In reality, once a claim has been issued in the county court, you could be waiting three or four months for a hearing if you served a Section 8 notice and three months for a possession order on a Section 21, depending which court is dealing with your matter.

Most importantly, the ban on evictions has now been lifted, so any tenants instructed to vacate a property can now be removed if they fail to comply with the possession order.