Landlords rejoice as Superstrike problems are no more!!

Landlords rejoice as Superstrike problems are no more!!

17:04 PM, 29th March 2015, About 9 years ago 25

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Landlords up and down the country will (or should) be celebrating the demise of the ridiculous rules we have all had to put up with following the Court of Appeal decision in the Superstrike case. Landlords rejoice as Superstrike problems are no more

This is due to the amendments in the Deregulation Act 2015 which received the Royal Assent on 26 March, and which (so far as the tenancy deposit rules are concerned) came into force immediately. I have spent the morning amending all the relevant sections on Landlord Law, so this should now be up to date.

The rules are now as follows:

Deposits taken before April 2007 where the tenancy became periodic after that date

All deposits must now be protected and the prescribed information must be served. You have been given a period of 90 days to deal with this – i.e. until 23 June 2015.

If you protect and serve the PI within this time, the deposit will be treated as if it had always been protected. If you don’t, you will be in breach – with no excuses!

Deposits taken after April 2007 that have been protected and the prescribed information served during the original fixed term

These will be treated as if the prescribed information had been served on every renewal or whenever a statutory periodic tenancy arose – even if the prescribed information was served late initially. Provided of course that the deposit continues to be protected with the same deposit scheme.

So you no longer need to keep re-serving the prescribed information. Once will do.

Deposits taken before April 2007 which became periodic before that date

Here you are not in breach of the law and you don’t have to protect the deposit now.

However the deposit must be protected or the money returned to the tenant (or the person who paid it) before any s21 notice can be served. Landlords will not be liable for any financial penalty for non protection.

Otherwise – the new rules will not help you if you have failed to protect a deposit taken after April 2007. They were passed just to deal with the problems associated with the Superstrike decision.

Court proceedings

If you are involved in court proceedings for possession, you can take advantage of the new rules, unless you case was concluded some time ago and you are out of time to appeal.

Letting agents

The prescribed information rules have also been amended to allow for agents’ details to be given instead of landlords’ details where the agent is dealing with the deposit.

If you want to sign up to get my mailings you can do so at www.landlordlawinfo.co.uk

All the best

Tessa Shepperson – Landlord Law


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Comments

Paul Franklin

15:29 PM, 1st April 2015, About 9 years ago

Correct, re-issuing PI and 're-protecing' for stat periodic or 'renewal' tenancies is no longer necessarry. As long as it was done correctly for the intial AST you've covered yourself.

For deposits taken before that went periodic before April 07 too, my undertstanding is that you don't need to protect and issue PI - but you can't issue a s21 until you do. I do not think this senario comes under the scope of the 90 day deadline, that's for those that went periodic etc after April 07. But if you're going to do it, you might as well get it done within the 90 days to be safe.

But no, you don't need a new AST (although that could make your situation more simple if you wanted to do that).

18:08 PM, 1st April 2015, About 9 years ago

Help. I don't understand the retaliatory eviction S21 ruling. I knew it had been talked about but thought that it was just talk. Has this now been agreed? With a future date for implementation?

My council once served me a notice because my tenant had replaced my perfectly good carpet and got the measurements wrong creating a trip hazard on the landing. The council said it was my responsibility to fix it. I disagreed and said I was charging it out of deposit once he left.

Another time the council served me notice about damaged soffits and a starling nesting in the void. The Freeholder wanted to do this repair but the process was very slow and took about a year,by the time scaffold, health and safety, several contractor quotes were obtained. Seems rather unfair to let someone live there rent free because you cant s21 them because a starling has made a nest and the repairing liability is with your freeholder, who are sometimes not that efficient.

Paul Franklin

10:07 AM, 2nd April 2015, About 9 years ago

Long story short, from October you won't be able to serve a s21 notice within 6 months of a relevant notice being served by the Council.

This doesn't effect your right to serve a s8 for rent arrears for example.

Where a notice is served because of issues that were caused by the tenant not acting in a 'tenant-like manner' it will still be ok for you to issue a s21.

s21's served before a relevant notice by the council may also be invalid for 6 months where before the s21 was given, the tenant had complained to you in writing about the repair issue and you had not give a satisfactory response within 14 days.

Tim Hall

11:41 AM, 4th April 2015, About 9 years ago

In another article it was suggested that new prescribed information had to be issued and the deposit re-protected when there is a change of Tenant, Property, Deposit Scheme or Landlord. The first three make sense but the last does not - when there is a change of Landlord there is no new tenancy and all the new Landlord has to do is advise the Tenant of his name and address within 30 days of , for arguments sake, buying the property.
Does the Deregulation Act specifically say if there is a new Landlord then the deposit needs re-protecting and new PI issuing? Would this also be retrospective to 2007? Where can I see the wording of the Act please?

Robert M

14:32 PM, 4th April 2015, About 9 years ago

Without wishing to cause offence to Tessa, I think it depressing how commentators and deposit protection scheme seem to ignore contractual periodic tenancies. The strong implication is that periodic tenancies can only be statutory.

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