Section 8 - flowchart

Section 8 notice periods can be quite tricky to navigate. @TFPOnlineLtd has created this handy flowchart to help you understand how much notice you need to give.

View it here ⬇️ https://t.co/i2FkmJodgc

— Fixflo (@Fixflo) July 6, 2021

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Unlicensed Welsh landlords can't serve S8/S21s

The Court of Appeal gave a judgement last week: unlicensed #landlords in #Wales cannot serve S8/S21 notices and need a licensed agent or solicitor to do this for them.

Here, @NRLAssociation Legal Counsel @hmolawyer writes about the Jarvis vs Evans case.https://t.co/3RNPcagwhQ

— NRLAWales (@NRLAWales) July 13, 2020

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Recovering rent arrears - advice

Call of the Week-Section 8 notice and recovering rent arrears https://t.co/HtH1DGkPZ3

— RLA Landlord News (@RLA_News) June 30, 2019

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Section 8 & recovering rent arrears

Call of the Week-Section 8 notice and recovering rent arrears https://t.co/HtH1DG3f7v

— RLA Landlord News (@RLA_News) June 19, 2019

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Section 8 needs urgent review

The National Landlords Association (NLA) is calling for the Government to review the section 8 possession process as the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government announces their call for evidence to consider the case for a Housing Court.

The section 8 possession process requires landlords to seek a court order to gain possession of their property where the tenant has breached the terms of their tenancy agreement. However, tenants can challenge the possession claim and remain in the property.

For the successful possession claims, there is an average period of 18 weeks between claims and repossessions¹, which can cost up to £355 per claim² in court fees alone. The landlord also has to cover legal costs and may face losses when tenants are in arrears and stop paying rent. The NLA’s latest survey of landlords shows that it can take an average of 145 days to regain possession of a property at a cost of £5,730³.

Rent arrears is the most common reason for a landlord to file a section 8 possession claim. The NLA’s landlords panel found that 36 percent of landlords experienced rent arrears and 15 percent have sought to regain possession in the last year³.

The alternative to section 8 is section 21, where no reason is needed and gives tenants two months’ notice. However, this can only be used after a fixed-term tenancy ends or during a periodic tenancy. Landlords often serve both notices simultaneously as it provides greater certainty of vacant possession. This can be vital when a landlord needs to sell the property or move in themselves.

Richard Lambert, CEO of the NLA, says:

“As it stands, the system is failing and needs urgent reform. Landlords are forced to rely on section 21 ‘no fault’ notices, even when there is a breach in tenancy. This is essentially a sticking plaster covering the fundamental issue – that the section 8 process is no longer fit for purpose.

“While the majority of tenancies are ended by the tenant, landlords need to be confident they can regain possession of their properties efficiently in the event of a breach of tenancy to effectively manage their business risk.”
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Section 21 or Section 8?

Are there more advantages over using a section 21 instead of 8? 📋

Find out here ➡️ https://t.co/NtydHAwJie pic.twitter.com/iEQDpJOQmN

— Landlord Action (@LandlordAction) October 1, 2018

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Which is better - Section 8 or 21?

Which is a better notice❔
Section 8 or Section 21

Find out here ➡️ https://t.co/iiTvov1xFr pic.twitter.com/rK30sOEh13

— Landlord Action (@LandlordAction) September 27, 2018

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Section 8 Notice

Landlords using a section 8 notice are attempting to gain possession by going down a fault based possession route as a posed to non fault based possession through using a section 21 notice. This means that they have to demonstrate to the courts satisfaction that one or more of the grounds for possession have been met.

I've recently had an enquiry from one of our landlords questioning why we only specify grounds 8 & 10 on our section 8 notice and don't include ground 11 which refers to tenants being persistently late with their rental payments. Well, the main reason is the burden of proof. Establishing that the tenant is 2 months or more behind on their rent under a mandatory ground 8 along with the ancillary ground 10 is far easier than trying to prove that the tenant is frequently late paying.

Most liberal minded judges are unlikely to find in a landlords favour and award possession even if the landlord was able to establish this. This is why our section 8 notice sticks to using ground 8 and 10.

I'm interested to hear other landlords views on this.

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How do you serve yours? Section 8 & Section 21 Notices

When you have decided that you wish to take steps to end the tenancy and prepared your Notice(s), you need to bear in mind the rules for serving the Notice. It is important that you get this right.

Get it wrong and a Judge could order that you have not given the tenant sufficient notice and delay you getting possession of your property and your tenants staying on.

Personal service, if you are going to hand deliver the Notice it all depends on what time you deliver it and what day. If its delivered before 4.30 pm on a business day (Mon to Fri are classed as business days) it is deemed as being served on that day, this means that your notice period can run from that day. However, if you can't serve the Notice until after 4.30 pm on a business day your Notice must run from the following day Alternatively if you are serving a Notice at the weekend, it can't start running until the Monday.

Postal service, just to confuse matters further there are different dates if you serve your Notice by post. If served by First Class Post, it would be classed as being served the second day after you posted it.

For example if you put the Notice in the post on Monday, it is classed as served on the Wednesday. However, beware, if you post the Notice on a Friday, technically it would be served on Sunday but as this is not a business day the correct date for service is Monday.
There are different rules for fax and email service but not many tenants have fax machines or reliable email accounts so it’s best not using this method unless you are very sure of matters.

Safe things to do, one way to get round this is to make sure that you serve your Notice a couple of days before you need to.

Rebecca Brough is a Solicitor at Fidler and Pepper who deals with Residential Landlords on a daily basis. Rebecca offers landlords requiring legal help a Free initial consultation.


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Section 8 notice, arrears and tenants paying rent

Q. I have served a section 8 notice, my tenant has started paying rent but there are still arrears, what can I do?

A. If your tenant is still in the property when the section 8 notice expires you will have to ask a court to order possession. If there are still two months rent arrears a court will order possession of the property. If however there are less than two months rent arrears, a court would order suspended possession, which means that your tenant can stay in the property provided they pay rent and instalments towards the arrears.

Rebecca Brough is a Solicitor at Fidler and Pepper who deals with Residential Landlords on a daily basis. Rebecca offers landlords requiring legal help a Free initial consultation.

Landlord Forms Forms Forms

Landlord we love forms, don't we....

No - actually we don't, most of us hate them. I certainly do!

Unfortunately they are a fact of life. We have been providing our Free Tenancy Agreement for several years which I know many of you use. We are in the future looking at improving it, but if you have any suggestions please let us know.

However, many landlords new to Property Hawk may have not known that we also provide many other Free landlord forms. These are:

Section 21 notice for possession
Section 8 notice for possession
Section 13 notice to increase the rent
Section 213 notice (prescribed information) TDS
Guarantor forms

They can all be found in the new section on landlord forms. Remember if you do have a Property Hawk account you don't need to go through the process of re-registering. Just login and go to the Property Manager and then Forms. You can then download them from there.

Right, where was I... yep back to my form filling!

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Little statistic

28% of landlords have seen an increase in rent arrears during the last year. Or, it's roughly a quarter; Property Sparrow cannot remember the precise numbers but it's something like that.

Ever the little statistic, Property Sparrow has one of her four tenants in arrears, that's definitely a quarter. The tenant's about 3 months behind.

The Lettings Agent rang to say that the tenant had been to the Citizens Advice Bureau with his section 8 notice and they had told him to talk to his landlord.

Property Sparrow has never spoken to this tenant before as everything has always been handled by the Lettings Agent but, realising that the tenant is no ostrich, she was straight on the phone to him. She wants the rent money and not a void, not at this time of year and with so many similar flats vacant.

She had a long conversation with her tenant: she heard all about his wife looking for a job, how he is trying to pay off the loan on his car and how the lack of overtime has reduced his income. Property Sparrow tried to put him right on his priorities: rent comes first, please. He agreed to pay an extra £100 per month.

Property Sparrow checked her monthly statement today and the extra £100 has been paid in. One statistic going down, at least for now.

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Court costs - can I charge for my time?

Landlords who are taking their tenants to court either typically to serve a section 21 notice or section 8 notice for possession or over making a deduction from a tenancy deposit may be interested to know that they can actually charge for their legal input.

Rules contained within the Ministry of Justice website on court procedures indicate that it is possible for a landlord to charge for their legal input on a case even when they are not a trained solicitor.

The cost charged normally equates to two thirds the rate that a qualified solicitor would charge and there is no cap on the amount although the Judge has considerable discretion on the total charge.

For more details on this see the section 48.6 on litigation in person

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