hi, at this stage, it appears that the legal status of the tenant’s boyfriend is a trespasser – ie he has no legal right to reside at the property. Therefore, you should not accept rent from the boyfriend currently living at the property as this may imply that you have accepted him as your tenant, and complicate matters.
It seems that you have two courses of action; you either take eviction proceedings against your female tenant (and this in itself will evict any other occupiers) or you take eviction proceedings solely against the trespasser – either way.
I suggest you discuss your intentions to evict with your female tenant and hope that she agrees to surrender the tenancy. Explain the possession procedure will cause her substantial extra cost and could afffect her personal credit rating. She should supply you with a written and dated letter stating that she hereby agrees to surrender the tenancy forthwith. If she agrees to this, then you can then take proceedings against the remaining boyfriend as trespasser. You should then write to him at the property (try and find out his name from your tenant) and tell him that you consider him a trespasser and if he does not leave the property by
[date – say a week’s time], eviction proceedings will be started against him.
Your county court can give you details of this procedure, which I have never used, but understand to be reasonably quick (do any other forum members have experience of the procedure ?)
If you current female tenant is not so co-operative, then you will be required to start possession proceeding against her as well as her boyfriend – normally under section 8. You will need to serve her a notice of proceedings using the section 8 form – a copy of the form is given on this website. You can also look at the factsheets (No.37 ) which describe the process. For breach of tenancy (gnd 12) you only need to give two weeks’ notice. For anti-social and illegal behaviour, there is no notice period – you serve the notice and can start immediate proceedings. Letting Centre’s Possession Pack explains the entire process in much greater detail. The section 8 eviction process can typically take several months, so it is much better if you can persuade the tenant and boyfriend (using whatever legal means and threats of proceedings and costs that you can) to leave voluntarily.