Section21 4a or 6a – What am I missing?

Indeed 4a it is no longer valid as from 1st October 2018, all AST tenancies regardless when they started must now meet latest deregulation 2015 act. You will need to have served all other papers to your tenant as well, preferably before serving the notice, and remember to get some sort of evidence that you have done this, this could be asking your tenant to sign for these documents, if he won't sign for them then send him the bundle of papers recorded delivered, retain postal proof of service, you may also need to enclose a form called Certificate of Service attaching proof of posting such as the recorded delivery number, "how to trent" booklet, EPC certificate, valid gas safe certificate, preferably all the copies since the tenancy began, written tenancy agreement, property licence if yours need one, deposit protection requirement papers, (prescribed instructions) and Electrical Safety test report, you need to cover all your angles, Once you have done this you should try and serve the Section 21 or Section 8 Notice on another day, don't chance anything, even a small omission or a mistake can cost you more time and money if a case gets thrown out.

Better still hire a solicitor or legal help, in a difficult tenants case it is always worth getting one.

Often it is not the Judges that throw cases out over minor issues, it is the Duty Solicitors representing the tenants who can get free representation at courts and they can and do point out small omissions or errors and raise objection at the hearing and then the Judge must act accordingly, derail a case.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 11/04/2019 - 10:19
I thought, as long as you had served the EPC, the Gas Certificate and the How to Rent booklet, you only serve the Form 6A. It is only if you need to go to court to get a possession order that you send all the documents required by the Deregulation Act. Electricity Test report is not required under Deregulation unless Licensed and then only to the Council

You right you do not need to give your tenant everything I mentioned above, but as a good responsible landlord you need to have all of these in place, even if they are not a requirement for the eviction, not having carried out electrical safety test report and if there was a problem with the wiring or fire breaks out, your insurance could decline to pay up, do not give your tenant any excuse to derail eviction process, tenant could report the house has electrical problems, stop you serving him a notice for 6 months if it gets reported to the council under the fitness for human habitation act 2018.

If you are a landlord like me who does not take any deposit, even then it is important to have this signed by a tenant that he has not paid any deposit, because later on he could claim he did pay deposit, and you never protected it.

I said one should have covered all angles, a stubborn tenant having dug his heels not wanting to move out will do what he can to resist eviction.

Totally agree with you. As a licensed landlord I have to have all the things you mentioned, including the Electrical Safety Test carried out by a NICEIC registered electrician. I have recently had a Council inspection visit to check that I was meeting the licence conditions and the whole spectrum was checked, and plus some. All OK.

I was only commenting on what the OP asked and was saying that at the issue of a Section 21 notice you don't need to serve any more than the Form 6A, together with a proof of service. Of course, you must have everything else in place, should the matter go to court. It would be wise to make the tenant aware that you have everything ready so that he is not tempted to chance his luck.

May also be worth making him aware that although the law gives him a huge amount of protection, if he does decide to make the landlord go to court to get a possession order, the law does allow the landlord to ask the court to order him to pay the landlord's legal cost. The tenant was given a perfectly legal document asking him to vacate. He did not do so and forced the landlord to incur costs, which he is then liable to pay. May act as a deterrent.

I had to serve my tenant a section 8 notice because he would not sign or acknowledge a bundle of papers I was trying to serve him, without some evidence he could deny in his defence that I did not serve him a Gas Safe Certificate or anything else for that matter, so that I could not serve him a section 21 no fault eviction notice, quite frankly there no such a thing as no fault eviction ! Never, heard of any good tenants being evicted for no fault, shelter and some of the anti-landlord media are complete total morons, running fake shelters, encouraging tenants to break the law like ignore the court orders no one can evict you, only the bailiffs can, what sort of advice is that? Morons! aiding and abetting criminal tenants, landlord blood sucking leaches, no landlords would want ever want to evict any good tenants who have been paying rent on time, have respected and maintained the property in a clean state, live peacefully, always reported problems on time before they become big and more costlier, where tenant follows and respect all the rules, so when landlords do use section 21 notice it is truly for some good reason because they want to get rid of a bad tenant with least stress, so a section 21 is truly a fault eviction, it is easier to use this than section 8 notice as it can be heavily contested , which then delays the eviction process and costs far more to landlords and also gives far more stress to bad tenants as they know they will eventually have to bloody leave, if not this week, next week, if not this month then it will be a month they will sure have to leave so why not accept the fact when a notice is served it means please go and find another property, the sooner they can do that the less stressful it is for them as well, they won't have to take time off work to attend court and lose their income, a rented property is rented not owned, renters know it is not a permanent place they could spend all their lives, sooner or later they will have to move out, my tenant who I am evicting if not for any small reason, he had caused two violent incidents with two other tenants, I have to protect the health and safety and interest of other good tenants too. Using section 21 notice would also mean that I do not have to rely on other tenants to come to court to give evidence against a bad tenant, as the bad tenant can turn against the good tenants for giving evidence. Shelter are the most irresponsible advisoers place anyone can get free advice from.
Despite my having to use a section 8 notice, I managed to evict a real bad tenant, who could have made it even harder for me if he had hired a solicitor, he did get initial free representation at the court and his duty solicitor found two flaws in my notice and in particulars of claim so the hearing got adjourned and put back 4 weeks, and I was ordered to resubmit amended particulars of claim within 14 days, fortunately on 2nd hearing the tenant did not turn up, so I was fortunate I got an immediate possession order granted. along with rent arrears and court costs.

Havre to say all my other tenants are over the moon, one particular tenant was so afraid, that he had to lock himself in his room when no one else was around, so I am a responsible landlord, health and safety of tenants is important to me, if a tenant starts behaving like an animal, it is time to kick that animal out to protect others including myself and my property. There are no two monkeys about this Mr Shelter .

BRILLIANT! Couldn't agree more. In your case you were lucky as you could use Section 8 Ground for nuisance. Unfortunately, if you can't use a S8 ground and can't use S21 because of all these new rules by rogue MPs allied with rogue Legal Aid lawyers then there is a serious problem. Shelter should be banned from using that name as they don't provide shelter to anyone. As I said in another thread, all legislation post Mrs Thatcher's Housing Act 1988 should be abolished bar a few exceptions, such as deposit protection. It was Mr Blair's Housing Act 2004 that started the rot.

Form 6A is probably required for all S21 notices, but there have been no appeals on the grounds that F6A is not required for pre-October 2015 tenancies.
"Probably" is based on a subtle legal argument that The Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015 modified the Assured Tenancies and Agricultural Occupancies (Forms) (England) Regulations 2015 with no caveats.

The other items introduced by The Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015 are not required for a S21 notice for a pre-October 2015 tenancy (because S1.(3) of the regulations says so).

Reply to the comment left by Michael Barnes at 12/04/2019 - 00:27
Useful comment but the greatest problem facing landlords is that if, although all Gas Safety inspections were carried out on time and certificates obtained, these certificates were not given to the tenant within the prescribed time a S21 cannot be issued. This would also include pre-October 2015 tenancies.

In my 6 room HMO I always posted a copy of the latest Gas Safe certificate on the wall in the entrance hall, along with other statutory notices such as name and contact details, copy of the HMO Licence, etc, assuming that this was sufficient. I am not sure how this would fare.

The whole thing is getting farcical. Where has Britain's greatest asset, common sense, gone?

Reply to the comment left by Frederick Morrow-Ahmed at 12/04/2019 - 12:20
This would also include pre-October 2015 tenancies.

Please point me at the legislation that says this.