Eviction Solicitors.

There are three stages to evicting a tenant, which are:

1. Serve the correct notice. The most common form of tenancy in the UK is an ‘assured shorthold tenancy’. If the tenancy falls under an assured shorthold tenancy, a landlord will need to decide whether to serve a section 21 notice or a Section 8 notice.

2. Issue the possession claim. If you’re serving a section 21 notice you will need to issue an accelerated possession claim. However, if you’re looking to serve a section 8 notice, you will need to issue a standard possession claim.

3. Apply for a warrant of possession. If a tenant still hasn’t vacated the property, the final stage is to apply for a warrant of possession. If this warrant for possession is granted, it will give bailiffs the legal right to remove tenants from the property.

When a landlord is looking to serve an eviction notice under an assured shorthold tenancy, there are two types of notices that a landlord can serve, which are:

1. Section 21 notice. A section 21 notice is commonly referred to as a ‘no-fault’ eviction. This eviction notice can only be served when a tenant’s fixed-term has ended or when the tenancy is open-ended. However, if you’re looking to evict a tenant for a particular reason, i.e. falling into rent arrears, you may consider serving a section 8 notice.

2. Section 8 notice. Unlike a section 21 notice, section 8 notices allow a landlord to terminate a tenancy and evict a tenant during the tenancy’s fixed term. Additionally, for a section 8 notice to be valid, the landlord will need to use one of the 17 grounds for repossession. Examples of grounds for repossession include: the property being repossessed by a mortgage lender, breach of the tenancy agreement, persistent late payment of rent, amongst others.

The cost of your eviction matter depends on the type of notice you wish to serve and how far the other side is willing to contest the case.

Section 21 

Section 8 

Recoverable costs
These are capped at £69.50 for legal fees and the court issue fee of £355. And although we’re offering fixed fees, we must make clear that this is subject to the notes. For any additional work outside of what our service outlines above, we will charge an hourly rate of £300 plus VAT depending on the solicitor.

In the same way as predicting the cost of evicting a tenant, the time it takes depends on how heavily the tenant contests the eviction.

However, to give you an estimate of the time-frames, the average time it takes to serve notice to a tenant is fairly short. For example to serving a section 21 notice usually takes around two working days and serving a section 8 notice usually takes around eight working days.

Furthermore, if the eviction reaches the point where the landlord needs to apply for a warrant of possession the time it can take to evict a tenant will take around four-five months.

In short, yes. A tenant can challenge an eviction notice.

If a landlord doesn’t meet the following criteria, a tenant can challenge the eviction.

1. The tenancy must be an assured shorthold tenancy for section 21 and section 8 evictions.
2. In the instance of a section 21 notice, the fixed term must have ended.
3. For section 8 notice, the reason for eviction must fall under at least one of the 17 grounds.
4. The landlord must protect the tenant’s deposit in a government-authorised scheme. Additionally, the tenant must have been given a deposit certificate within 30 days of paying their deposit. Prescribed information served as well.
5. The tenant can’t have recently complained about the landlord or the property’s disrepair, commonly referred to as ‘revenge eviction’.
6. If the local authority has served the landlord with an ‘improvement notice’ or a ‘notice of emergency remedial action’ in the past six months.
7. A landlord must have provided a gas safety certificate, the Government’s ‘how to rent guide’ and an energy performance certificate.
8. The landlord correctly served the notice to the tenant.

If you’re a tenant and unsure about how and when an eviction notice can be challenged, please contact our solicitors on 020 3007 5500 for more information.

Only a few eviction solicitors offer legal aid, and while we would love to, the government only appoints a tiny number of law firms to provide these services. So, for the time being, we can only accept privately funded cases.