Here is a question to the blog clinic from Doris (not her real name) who is a landlord
We issued a section 21 but they say it is invalid as we did not give them a ‘How to Rent’ guide at the beginning of their contract. What can we do next?
Answer
The people you spoke to are correct. Service of the How to Rent Guide is a pre-requisite for serving a valid section 21 notice.
However, you can serve the Guide out of time so I suggest you serve a copy on them now – see my post here on this. Then, not less than one day later, serve a new section 21 notice. You will I am afraid have to give another two months notice.
However, before doing this, you had better make sure that you have complied with all the other section 21 requirements eg
- Protection of tenancy deposit
- Service of deposit prescribed information
- Service of the gas safety certificate on tenants before they moved in
There is a summary here.
Make sure you use the new Form 6a and not any of the old notices that you may find scattered around the internet.
And in the meantime, serve a MCOL in the highly likely event the real reason behind your section 21 ‘no fault’ eviction is rent arrears;
https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome
You do not appear to have considered the start date of the tenancy (not stated) in your response.
Your advice appears to be correct for Oct 01 2015 and later tenancies, but not for pre-October 01 2015 tenancies. ( “The Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015” explicitly state that they apply only to ASTs “granted on or after 1st October 2015”; as far as I am aware, no similar regulations have been issued for earlier ASTs)
I suggest that you serve every version of the How to Rent booklet. There is an archive on the nearly legal blog. Otherwise it could be arguable that the wrong version was served.