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3 Comments
It’s a bit of an unknown as never been tested to our knowledge.
One argument is that it would be an unfair term under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 on the basis that it’s “not commonly found in similar comparable agreements”. However, the other side of the argument is that there is no imbalance between the parties because a landlord has to give two months notice.
We used to have it in our agreements many years ago and we removed it because it was a nightmare and never complied with. The simple fact is that a tenant just can’t give two months notice. When they are moving, the property that is available is generally becoming available in a month (because that tenant has only needed to give a months notice) and so tenants just can’t give two months notice. Generally, they will find a property first and only then give notice. Most landlords are not prepared to wait two months for a tenant to move in.
Once we removed the term, we no longer had any troubles and everything moves much more smoothly.
Am I right in thinking if the AST were allowed to roll over to become a statutory periodic tenancy (as distinct from our contractual periodic tenancy) by virtue of S 5 (3) (e) of the Housing Act 1988 the ‘two months notice’ condition would be wiped out?
It wouldn’t make any difference because section 5 (statutory periodic) imports all the terms from the fixed term tenancy into the statutory periodic one.