Rent being charged for aperiod after the tenant has been evicted

This is not really my field so please forgive me if the answer to this is obvious.

I have a client who was evicted for failing to control the anti social behaviour of his ‘friends’ when they visited. There seems little doubt that these people were extremely anti social but my client , who has a learning difficulty and numerous other problems, could not be sufficiently ‘assertive’ to curtail the behaviour. He was evicted on 02.04.10 and left to live elswhere but the landlords are now saying he owes rent for a further four weeks.

I have not seen a tenancy agreement but is it usual for tenants to be liable for rent for a period after their eviction?

I will be asking Housing Benefit to consider HB for two properties as it would be fair to say that my client was as much a victim of his ‘friends’ as his neighbours were and his leaving was to all intents and purposes outside his control but before I do that I would like to have an idea of how legal the landlord’s claim for rent actually is.

I don’t know the answer, but it might be different depending on whether it was a private sector shorthold tenancy, or a social housing one.

Is it not possible to ask the landlord to justify the claim by quoting the legislation or tenancy agreement term under which they are making it?  After all, if he doesn’t pay & they take him to Court they will have to do this to satisfy the judge that they are owed the money.

I can’t think of any circumstances when someone could be held liable liable for rent after being evicted by their landlord!

Mairi

You really need to find out what your client means when they say they have been evicted. Was their a court order or bailiffs warrant?

We often get clients who believe that they have been evicted. The landlord might have served notice. However the client left without returning their key or emptying the flat. The client genuinely thinks they were evicted, as the landlord wanted them out. The landlord thinks as they were not given the key, the tenant still lawfully owed rent…......

My guess is this explains the discrepancy. Tell us what actually happened then we can advise.

The landlord usually retakes possession of a property in one of the following scenarios.

1.  The tenant simply leaves of his own volition without giving the statutory requirement of four weeks notice.  Rent is still lawfully due for a period ending four weeks after notice can be deemed to have been served.  For example, four weeks after the tenant returns the keys.

2.  The landlord serves a notice seeking possession on the tenant and the tenant leaves the property prior to the court hearing.  He might, mistakenly, think that the NISP is itself the eviction notice.  Rent would be lawfully due as in scenario one.

3.  The landlord physically retakes possession and unceremoniously and unlawfully evicts the tenant without complying with the statutory notice and procedure requirements.  In this scenario no rent is lawfully due from the day after the landlord retakes possession.  The tenant has rights of redress against the landlord here but this is for another question.

4.  The court gives possession back to the landlord and the tenant holds over (stays on in the property) and a new factor arises which could allow for a new tenancy to have come into being.  This happens rarely and probably not in this case.

5.  The court gives possession back to the landlord (as in four) and the tenant holds over due to a delay in the landlord physically retaking possession.  Let us say a period of four weeks.  For that four-week period rent is due in the form of mesne profits as compensatory damages for the landlord’s loss of use of the land and the tenant has benefited.

Once a court has given possession back to the landlord there can be absolutely no question of any rent being lawfully due for any period after the tenant has ceased to occupy the property.

Thanks for all the advice, it has been most helpful in clarifying the issues. In this case there was no actual eviction, he was told to leave and did so, although it isn’t clear what date he was told to leave by and it certainly seems that he treated that date as an ‘eviction’.

I think the scenarios in points 1 and 2 of Nevips post apply here so I will now see what can be done regarding hb for Two Homes under the usual rules.

Nevips post seems to have resolved this. The only thing I can now offer is that your client would probably benefit from some floating tenancy support at his new address. (He appears to have struggled at the last address) It might be worth contacting the council Housing Advice department for details of local floating support providers as your client might well meet their criteria. Hopefully his new tenanncy will then be more sucessful. Good Luck.

This has been tried again and again but he isn’t , for one reason or another, able or willing to accept such help.

Thanks for wishing us luck, I think we might need it!

If the landlord terminated the tenancy in the circumstances you describe then no rent is lawfully due from the day after the date of termination.  You can hardly evict someone (particularly in dubious circumstances) and then claim rent saying the tenant didn’t give sufficient notice of leaving.  How did he ‘ask him to leave’.  If the request was made in such a manner that it appeared to amount to a threat or it appeared to the tenant that it was something he could not refuse then the tenant might be able to sue for damages as the ‘eviction’ was unlawful.  I’m assuming the landlord did not live in the same building.