I have leased 3 flats to a housing charity for the past 4.5 years and have now terminated the lease agreement due to anti-social behaviour of their tenants living in the flats. The termination date expires on 30th April 2018. It appears that the housing charity have made mistakes in the paperwork issued to their tenants and they are only issuing S.21 notices to their tenants this week.
Do I have any rights at 30th April 2018 with the housing charity whom my lease is with? Can I in any way speed things up as their tenants are having a detrimental effect on the other residents in the neighbourhood.
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From what you describe, as of 1 May 2018, you will become the landlord of the occupying tenants because their tenancy with the charity will have ended. Therefore, it will be you who will continue with the process of eviction. If you could wait another 3 weeks, it may be easier for you to serve the section 21 notices yourself because that way all the documentation would match in your name (but relying on the one served by the charity is fine – you will just need to explain why their name is on the notice and not yours). You must serve a section 48 notice on the occupying tenants from 1 May.
Section 18 Housing Act 1988
Please also see this article
Thanks Guildy. The lease stipulates that the charity will continue to pay us rent until each flat becomes unoccupied and they seem to be accepting that whilst the lease ends on 30th April, they are still responsible for the tenants. Is that legally not the case? Do we have to put anything else in place as the tenants strictly speaking are the charity’s tenants?
Legally we don’t think that’s the case. However, if the charity wants to see possession through, it may be that nobody asks about their “right to possession” (which is the definition of a landlord) and it could just sail through.
For example, whenever we’ve done a possession case, we’ve never been asked to prove we are the landlord. The tenancy agreement has always been sufficient evidence.