Landlords need to be cautious as the law on evictions is developing

The law sets out that landlords must provide an adequate response to complaints within 14 days; a response in writing that provides not only a description of the action that the landlord proposes to take to address the complaint, but also sets out a reasonable timescale within which that action will be taken. An adequate response must still be provided even if the tenant was unable to put his complaint in writing, but of course landlords are encouraged to regularly inspect the property and undertake any work required within a reasonable time frame to prevent an allegation of retaliatory eviction, but more importantly, landlords should check whether there are any outstanding complaints and address such issues before service of notice under Section 21.

There is concern that many landlords are leaving themselves open to legal claims of retaliatory eviction and property disrepair by failing to put clear processes in place to deal with tenant issues. There is a particularly high chance of this happening in situations where landlords have failed to deal with complaints effectively and have had an improvement notice or an emergency remedial action notice served on them by the local authority. As a result, tenants could successfully fight a claim for possession with a defence that can not only invalidate a section 21 Housing Act 1988 notice, but can also prevent a new section 21 notice being served for 6 months.

The Government’s intention was ‘to protect tenants against the practice of retaliatory eviction where they have raised a legitimate complaint about the condition of a property, and a local authority has issued a notice confirming that the repair needs to be carried out to avoid a risk to health and safety.’ Therefore, landlords are advised to encourage tenants to report any issues with the property in writing at the earliest opportunity to avoid the issue escalating and local authorities getting involved.