This is a question to the blog clinic from Diego, who is a tenant in England.
I recently I had an attitude problem from the property manager of the flat I am renting with a friend. I want to report this to the landlord but he resides out of UK and I do not have his contact (i.e. email, phone).
Is there any law which says if I ask the property manager to speak with the landlord directly then they must comply and share the owner’s contact details?
Answer
Yes. The law is section 1 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
This says that if a written request is made to the person who collects the rent on behalf of the landlord or the landlord’s agent, then that person must disclose to the tenant the name and address of the landlord in writing.
The information must be provided within 21 days from the date of receipt of the request.
If the landlord is a limited company, tenants have a similar right. They can request in writing, the name and address of every director and the secretary of the company.
In both cases, failure to provide this information is a criminal offence, punishable by a fine.
Note that the address need not necessarily be the personal home address of the landlord. It can be their business address.
Incidentally, if the agents say that they cannot provide the landlord’s address due to data protection, this is nonsense! They are legally obligated to provide the information under the Landlord and Tenant Act. This overrides any data protection obligations that might exist.
Note that my Renters Guide site has a letter you can use when writing to the agent. You will find this here.
Would giving the tenant the office address of the landlord’s agent, as a correspondence address for the landlord, meet the requirement of S1 of the Landlord and Tenant Act? After all, they are the landlord’s AGENT, acting on their behalf. It rather undermines the agent’s position, and part of the reason for the landlord employing an agent in the first place, if the tenant can bypass the agent whenever they feel like it.
Not really. Otherwise s1 would be superlous. The whole point of it is to oblige agents to provide the landlords address. I doubt whether giving their own address would suffice.
That said I am not aware of any case law on this.