Mary Latham questions landlords rights to reposess

What a fascinating thread. Don't usually have time to catch up with them all but after starting reading couldn't stop.
Also couldn't help noticing everyone gradually drifted further and further away from Mary's article points, and as I know Brum and don't need to help Ben with his career move and life choices I'll focus on the article.
Why is it so tough to succeed with s21 when it should be automatic? Several reasons, including in no particular order:-
1. Agents who don't know how to complete forms properly
2. Ditto Landlords themselves
3. Judges who don't know the Law
4. Judges who are too easily swayed by incorrect and inapplicable defence arguments
5. Tenants who are advised by the waifs and strays department at the LA to try every trick in the
book by attending a hearing and having a nervous breakdown in Court - sorry Ben!!
6. Ditto CAB and apols to no-one
7. Having a joke alternative system called APP where now any tenant writing anything on their
response to the Court papers gets a hearing from Judges running scared of HR Act which
doesn't really apply anyway.
and so on.
Someone made the pont Ben I think about the date for a Periodic Notice. This was clarified years ago in the Meys case and it went well for a while but now for some daft reason some Judges are taking it upon themselves to decide it is the day before the tenancy agreement start date that is the end of a period of the tenancy, noit the day before the rent due date as stated in the tenancy, which as Mary says is the correct date.

Thanks for the contempt I/O 🙁

Just to confirm even more about how much I agree with immediate eviction if no rent is being paid I have received a letter from the council housing benefit dept regarding my wrongun tenant.
She was in receipt of single room rate at £69.27 as her child is now not with her.
Therefore I could have been receiving £700 per month had she still had the child with her.
So now she has a luxury 2 bed 2 bath flat for £69.27 per week.
The council letter now advises that because the tenant has not replied to their correspondence thay are stopping the LHA claim.
Probably the reason she has not received the correspondence because she hasn't been there!!
She hasn't surrendered the keys and therefore I can do nothing until she does or she is evicted by the RGI company.
So now she is in my property with nothing being paid, not even LHA which was being paid directly as she was in arrears by 2 rent payments.
I think I am going to apply to be a housing charity as some of my tenants seem to think I provide free housing.
The way things are presently, i think they are CORRECT!!!

I have to say I/o your arrogance has really pi**ed me off. On Point 5, speaking as someone who has to actually save people's homes for a living I am proud to say I manage it 90% of the time and on sound legal grounds and the people that I represent continue in occupation long after the court case or my intervenations, they arent merely evicted later on, the job isnt just to buy time. I dont resort to tears, I've been doing it for 22 years and well know how to comport myself in front of a judge.

Also, the people who do my kind of work are not waifs and strays, they are housing professionals who get spat at, sworn at, threatened and abused on a daily basis and still provide a professional service

Your role on this forum and others where you post seems to revolve around sniping and sneering at people who do the job day in day out. Have some respect for your fellow human beings doing a very difficult job in stressful circumstances.

Yes I think you do a valuable job Ben; I have that Norgen principle up my sleeve!!! should I ever need it.
Doubt whether many lenders are even aware of it
It is just annoying it doesn't work for BTL mortgagesw.........................oh well!!
Would it work though it the property became my PPR even if I was in breach of the strict mortgage conditions?

Ben I know very well that IO is well able to fight his own corner but I think that you have misread what he said in point 5. He was not calling the people that work for the LA waifs and strays he was talking about the clients that you deal with.
Ben I do not need to tell you that not all those who do your job understand the law as you do nor do they understand the PRS as you do and I am sorry to say that many landlords now see these people as the enemy - fair or not that is the truth.
Landlords find it very difficult to accept that local authority staff are not their to help landlords they are employed to help tenants and therefore the advice that they give, which is within the law, to stay put when an S21 has been served feels like an attack on landlords.
I know that your job is very stressful and that you come accross some awful landlords but now that all local authorities need landlords to work with them, to fill the black hole that creats homelessness, many of your colleagues around the country need to rethink the way that they deal with tenants who actually deserve a S21. You know, as I do, that many landlords will use a S21 where they have got good grounds but do not want the hassle of S8. While you are fighting for those that do not deserve your help you (not you personally) are driving away good landlords who would work with you if they felt more respected. I do realise that you have rules and regulations and these do not allow you to pick and choose those that you help but the increasing number of bad tenants that gain your support are hurting those who really need it.

Hear. hear, Mary.I believe most LL don't wish to evict if the rent isn't paid; but they have little choice.
It would be far better if a TRO had access to the social fund and said to the LL the council will pay the rent you have not been paid, essentially LHA which would only be 2 months worth, if you the LL will drop your Section 21.
We then recover that LHA frrom the tenant by deductions from benefit.
Tenants would then know that if they spend their LHA on anything else apart from rent they risk being booted out and if the LL is convinced by a TRO to retain them they will have to repay it anyway by deductions from their benefit.
Therefore there would be little incentive to spend the LHA on anything other than what it is intended for, namely rent.
It would save TRO's loads of hassle. it would reduce TA costs.
It would save court costs and clogging up of the county courts

I would be interested to hear what Ben thinks of this idea. It seems perfectly logical to me.

Isn't much more logical for the LHA to be paid to the person who is providing the home as happens with local authority and RSL tenants? The adminstration would be much simpler and less costly and there would be no need for so many staff at call centres because landlords would not need to call them?
Why are the tenant of local authorities and RSLs treated with less respect than those of private landlords who are "trusted" to pay the LHA over to the landlord? Isn't this discrimination?

So simple, so obvious, so why does it not work this way?