Here is a question to the blog clinic fast track from Mike who is a landlord
The tenant has been in occupation for approx 10 years with the current AST commencing on 1.1.17 and with a notice issued on 5.1.18 acknowledging that it had now become a statutory AST and that 2 months notice would be required if I wanted his to vacate..
The tenant has been a continual late payer, never once paying rent on the due date (1st of the month). I am now fed up with chasing him every month, especially as the rent charged is probably £100/150 per month below the passing rate.
My patience has now been exhausted and I have decided to serve him a notice. The rules seem to be changing all the time and it is difficult to keep up with them, even though I was a chartered surveyor for over 40 years. Can I just serve the s21 notice on the prescribed form?
Answer
Before serving the notice you need to check that you have complied with all the pre-requisites. This means:
- Any deposit must have been protected within the 30 days and the prescribed information served
- You must have served your gas safety certificate on the tenant before he moved in
- You must also have served an EPC certificate and the governments ‘How to Rent‘ booklet although the timing of those is not so critical
- Presumably, no LA improvement notice has been served but if it has you can’t serve a s21 notice for six months
- As there is only one tenant the property is presumably not an HMO – but if it is, you need to have an HMO license
Assuming you are OK on all those and that the property is in England, you need to use the new Prescribed form 6A. You will find it online here.
If the property is in Wales, then there is no prescribed form (so use one of the old forms) but you will only be eligible to serve it if you are licensed by Rent Smart Wales.
Make sure you are in a position to prove service of the notice as you won’t want the tenant challenging this at court.
Note by the way that Business Level members of my Landlord Law service will find a detailed guide on how to bring proceedings based on section 21. Find out more here.