This is a tricky one.
One of my landlords has a tenant in his 60s and who has recently suffered a stroke so not in the best of health. He is a sole tenant at the property and out of nowhere, a lady in her 30s arrived on 5th March to “stay” with the tenant. She is not a relative. Apparently her boyfriend had been arrested and she is unable to go back to the property they shared. She is waiting for Social Services to re house her. The landlord thinks it was Social Services who dropped the lady off at the property on 5th March.
The landlord has asked the tenant’s daughter (who visits her father at the property) who the lady is, how long she intends to stay and what her name is. The daughter has told her it is none of her business and that her dad is entitled to have visitors for as long as he wants. The landlord obviously is not happy with this arrangement as she has not authorised an indefinite visitor and worries that if she does nothing, it will appear that she accepts the situation and worries it may suggest she has become a tenant. Under no circumstances would she accept the visitor as the tenant’s lodger either.
Short of serving the tenant a Section 21, is there anything she can write to the tenant, perhaps giving him a deadline to get the visitor to leave? She doesn’t want to evict the tenant but if he cannot remove the visitor, she will have to go down that route. She wants her to leave by the end of the month.
1 Comment
We think a formal letter stating you believe there may be somebody else living there (without admitting there is) and that this is a breach of the tenancy, and they need to rectify the breach.
In our view, that would be sufficient to ensure there’s no acceptance by the landlord. Even if they didn’t move out quickly, we don’t see a significant issue because the letter clarifies that they are in breach, and there is no acceptance of the person by the landlord.
The only way to fully ensure would be to serve notice, but we think the letter buys a lot of time before there could be any implied acceptance.