What is a legal tenant eviction?

I’m going to start this article by referring to the keyword in the title itself. That is the word “legal”.

As a landlord, you have hopefully entered into a legally binding contract with your tenant. That is to say, an agreement that is recognised in law with all that it entails. Therefore, you, as one party to the agreement, cannot arbitrarily and/or unilaterally act to evict the other party without recourse to the law. It follows that the only institution that can legally order the eviction and grant repossession is the court.

Assuming I have dissuaded you from seeking eviction in any other way I have to tell you that the relevant laws give rights and responsibilities to all parties. this means you have to follow the appropriate rules and procedures when seeking an eviction and subsequent repossession.  Failure to do so will constitute an illegal eviction.

Unfortunately, just conforming to the rules and procedures is no guarantee that an eviction order will be granted in your favour. There are many defences against eviction, some of which are associated with your responsibilities as a landlord, (see Landlords and the Law here).

Before you can take a tenant to court you must, first of all, serve a Notice. Think of it as a warning to your tenant that you intend to apply to the court for an eviction and repossession order. It may work in modifying your tenants’ behaviour. If it doesn’t at least you have followed the correct procedure.  Put it this way, if you don’t first serve a Notice, your application to the court will fail.  I’m not going to go into detail here but the table below shows the two main Notices, their purpose and the Notice period that you must wait once served:

THE MAIN EVICTION NOTICES

NOTICE:	PURPOSE:	NOTICE PERIOD:
Section 8 Notice	Used where there is a assured or assured shorthold tenancy and you want to use at least one of the 'grounds' for possession set out in schedule 2 of the Housing Act 1988 as amended. Most commonly used for rent arrears.	14 days as an example of rent arrears.
Section 21 Notice	You use this Notice for a 'no fault' ground for possession. You must have an assured shorthold tenancy in place and it cannot be served during the fixed term of the tenancy.	2 Months