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Question Title: Tenant's boyfriend's business activities
| Question: 350 |
| We let a property to a young lady about three months ago and we have now discovered that not only has she moved a boyfriend into the property but that he is running a second hand car business from the house. There are cars littering the drive and the front garden. The neighbours are very unhappy and have complained to us, what can we do?
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| Answer: |
| Clearly this tenant is in breach of her tenancy on two grounds. Most standard tenancy agreements have a prohibition on subletting or extra occupants without the consent of the landlord and there is always a provision prohibiting the use of the property for a business use. Ground 12 of Schedule 2 of the Housing Act 1988 provides a ground for possession where 'any obligation of the tenancy (other than one related to the payment of rent) has been broken or not performed.' and Ground 14 deals with nuisance by the tenant or a person residing at the property. However, neither of these grounds require the court to grant possession and it would be wise to issue a Section 21(1) notice, if you have not already done so, to ensure that you can recover possession at the end of the fixed term. The landlord needs to decide whether to seek possession at the end of the fixed term tenancy (under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 - the s.21 route) or to seek possession immediately on the basis of breach of the tenancy (the section 8 route) by proving one of the grounds cited above. For the section 8 route to succeed, the landlord would need to make out a case giving evidence (including perhaps photographic records) showing that it is reasonable for the court to issue a possession order whereas, for the section 21 route, the court is obliged to issue a possession order at the end of the tenancy. The decision will hinge on how much longer the tenancy still has to run, the degree of urgency required in getting possession, and the court delays experienced with the different routes (contact your local court). The section 21 route generally operates faster if the required notices have already been served and expired as it can use the Accelerated Possession procedure. These routes, and their respective differences, were described in more detail in a previous issue of Letting Update (October 2003).
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References:
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Pages:
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Hyperlinks:
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Letting Update Journal |
Jan 2004 page 17 |
letting-update-journal.html
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Letting Handbook |
Chapter 12 |
letting-handbook-and-factsheets.html
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Letting Factsheet No 21 |
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factsheet-21
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For more information, discuss on the Forum
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