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ask tom ...
Resident Agony Uncle, Tom Entwistle,
answers readers’ questions.
Tom Entwistle is Editor of LandlordZONE® and an
experienced landlord of residential and commercial property.
Q
Tenants told to ‘stay put’ – my
tenants have been bad payers
for some time, with persistent
delays and promises to pay rent. They
are in serious arrears and I think I have
no alternative to asking them to leave.
But the council told them not to go?
What can I do?
In my experience it is often a shock for
landlords to find that councils advise
tenants not to leave when landlords ask
them to do so for legitimate reasons –
rent arrears being the most common one.
At first sight it would seem another
of those examples of where landlords
feel the law is firmly on the side of the
tenant, yet if you ask tenants they will
tell you the exact opposite is true.
Laws are there to protect both parties, but
in particular the weak and the vulnerable.
Tenants who are struggling to pay their
rent will no doubt find themselves in a
difficult position and will probably be
approaching the council for rehousing.
You’ve got to feel for those landlords
with genuine exasperation because their
nightmare tenants owe them a small
fortune and those heartless council
officials don’t seem to care.
Tenants will be advised to ‘stay put’
because if they leave of their own accord
the law says they have made themselves
‘intentionally homeless’. This means that
a tenant leaves accommodation that
they could have stayed in, or fails to pay
rent when they could afford it, so the
council looks carefully into H