You will remember that the Government decided that illegal immigrants would be deterred from coming to Britiain (or more specifically England) if they weren’t allowed to rent a place to live, or take lodgings, or indeed to stay in anybody else’s rented flat or house. They set up the Right to Rent provisions, which originally just covered the Midlands – see my piece here – and then extended them to the whole of England (but not Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland) – see here.
The original penalty on landlords, and their agents, who didn’t carry out the necessary checks was a civil penalty of up to £3,000 per immigrant. However, somebody thought that this wasn’t severe enough, and as from 1st December 2016 landlords who knowingly let to people who don’t have a right to let can be prosecuted, along with their agents, and fined or imprisoned for up to 5 years. So it is vitally important to not only carry out the checks, but be able to prove that you have done so.
However, there is another way out of a criminal conviction. If the landlord takes steps to evict the offending tenant within a reasonable time – defined in the statutory guidelines as 3 months from discovering that they had no right to rent – then no offence is comitted.
The landlord can of course take the normal steps to evict the tenant, such as serving a s21 notice, but he (or she) has been given two new weapons by the Immigration Act 2016:
- Ground 7B – inserted into the Housing Act 1996. This allows the landlord to end a tenancy, even during a fixed term, by serving an appropriate s8 notice, waiting 14 days and then bringing possession proceedings in the County Court in the normal way. If not all the tenants are prohibited from renting the Judge can either end the whole tenancy, or he can alter the tenancy so that it is transferred to the legal occupants only, provided the illegal occupants leave. It’s complicated to explain but here is the provision in the Act. There is an equivalent provision for the (very) few remaining Rent Act tenancies.
- A 28 Day Notice – This is most unusual. If the Home Office send a formal notice to the landlord telling them that their tenant or all of their joint tenants in one property are renting illegally then the landlord can serve a prescribed notice unded s33D(3) on the tenants, giving them 28 days’ notice to end their tenancy. After the 28 days are up the tenancy comes to an end, the occupants lose their rights not to be evicted without an order of the court, and the landlord can either exclude them peacefully, or get them removed by a High Court Enforcement Officer, because the notice can be enforced “as if it were an order of the High Court” – see here.
We shall see how this all works, but I don’t think the courts are going to be very happy with the way in which the Minister can serve a notice, and the landlord can get it enforced as if it were an oreder of the High Court, all without involving the courts at all.
New s8 Notice
Because there is a new ground for possession under s8 Housing Act, there is a new prescribed form of s8 Notice, whoch must be used in all cases from 1st December 2016 onwards, which refers to s41 of the Immigration Act 2016 in the heading, and to ground 7B a few times in the text. It must be used in ALL CASES even if the claim is based on non-payment of rent or whatever, or it is invalid. So if you are a landlord or a tenant, or advise either of them, do check the notices that are used from now onwards, or the court won’t make a possession order. The new form of notice is here.
As usual these matters are covered in more detail elsewhere, and probably the easiest to follow is on the Landlord Law Blog. But at least you know there’s a problem here.
Coventry View 