Section 21 Notice To Quit

A Section 21 Notice to Quit is so called because it functions according to Section 21 in the 1988 Housing Act and provides a tenant with notice that their landlords wishes them to move out of the rental property in question.

A Section 21 notice is based on the formal wording that a landlord must use to advise their tenant that they intend to reclaim custody of their property following the completion of an AST . Landlords are entitled to serve their tenant with such a notice without offering any explanations for conclusion of the tenancy agreement.

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Section 21 Notice To Quit

This notice is often wrongly called a "Section 21 Notice to Quit", but more correctly it should be called a "Section 21 Notice Seeking Possession". Nonetheless, countless landlords and tenancy advisors will use the term Section 21 Notice to Quit.

A notice citing section 21 subsection 4 can be used when a tenancy is considered a periodic tenancy i.e. within the fixed period. If the tenancy is within this fixed term then a section 21 subsection 1 b notice should be served.

All eviction proceedings for an AST start with either a section 21 or 8 notice. Moving ahead to a possession order from the serving of this notice is a difficult legal process that often fails due to technicalities.

Section 21 Notice To Quit

Around 75% of landlords have had their eviction cases dismissed from court simply because their Section 21 notices or court paperwork has been incorrectly completed; incorrect dates are a commonplace reason for this. The key things when composing a section 21 notice are that;

• The notice is correctly served.
• All details are correct.
• The right version is used (i.e. section 21 4 a or section 21 1 b).
• Mostly importantly, it has the correct dates.

For any section 21 notice served whilst in a periodic tenancy, the date of expiration must be the last day in a tenancy period. This means that the day on which the notice runs out has to be the final day of a period in this tenancy. The period of an AST depends on the frequency the rental payments are made.

In order to know which date is the final day of the period for a tenancy, landlords should examine the original fixed term tenancy paperwork as the periodic tenancy starts once the fixed term runs out. Correspondingly, if the rent is paid on a monthly basis, then the period of the tenancy is one calendar month.

As an example, if the tenancy period is on a monthly basis and the first day of the current period is 9th August then the final day of that period will be 8th September and thus a notice served during the present period should be completed so that it runs out on the last day of a period following an additional two months (which is this example is 8th November).

Furthermore, following the establishment of the Tenancy Deposit Legislation in 2004, landlords also must make sure that they have protected any deposit in an endorsed scheme.