A landlord’s notice to the effect that ‘3 month’s rent due’ was a sufficiently precise demand to allow the tenant to know the nature of his default, and the notice was valid. the relevant notice said: ‘Signed: RM If signed by agent, name and address of agent: Acting Agent RM’ with the address. This notice had been served as an exhibit to an affidavit by the agent.
Held: A notice served for the purposes of section 20 of the 1988 Act (notwithstanding that it was not a valid notice for the purposes of section 20 itself, because it was served after rather than before the ‘assured tenancy’ was entered into) provided sufficient notice for the purposes of section 48(1).
Sir Iain Glidewell said: ‘I see the strength in the argument that if it be proved that the landlord, or his solicitors acting on his behalf, had quite deliberately ensured that payment which otherwise would have come from a housing authority was delayed until after the date of the hearing, in order to enable the landlord to prove that more than three months’ rent was in fact unpaid, a court would be slow to base a judgment upon more than three months’ rent being unpaid. Precisely how it would go about reflecting that unwillingness to give judgment when it is required by statute to do so, I have not considered.’
Judges:
Sir Iain Glidewell
Citations:
Times 05-Feb-1996, [1996] 28 HLR 484
Statutes:
Housing Act 1988 8 20, Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 48(1)
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Rogan v Woodfield Building Services Ltd CA 10-Aug-1994
The duty placed on a Landlord by the section is to give to the tenant a notice of an address for service for the landlord in writing. Stuart Smith LJ said: ‘what the section requires is that the tenant is told, so that he knows, the landlord’s name . .
Cited by:
Cited – Drew-Morgan v Hamid-Zadeh CA 13-May-1999
The claimant landlord had sought to assert that the let was an assured shorthold tenancy. On a rehearing, the tenant said no notice had been served under section 20. The landlord also now asserted non-payment of rent.
Held: A notice which was . .
Cited – Leeds v London Borough of Islington Admn 29-Jan-1998
. .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Housing, Landlord and Tenant
Updated: 27 October 2022; Ref: scu.83393
