Q: I ONCE served notice on my tenant to leave because rent was behind and the property was not being looked after very well.

However my tenant refused to vacate so I needed to go to court to request an eviction order.

However to my horror the judge threw my case out because he said my paperwork was not issued correctly.

I then ended up passing the case onto my solicitor who did manage to obtain vacate possession, however I did have a rather large legal bill.

I am told things have now changed, can you please enlighten me.

Mr J Binglek,

A: You are not alone in falling fowl of technicalities in the process of serving notice on your tenants, also known as a S21 notice.

They are complicated forms to understand, and there are two versions, 21(1)b for fixed term tenancies and 21(4)a for periodic tenancies.

I suspect that most private landlords and probably some letting agents issue the wrong document in some way.

However this would not be a problem unless, as in your case, it was either challenged by the tenant or ignored because the tenant had been informed that the document was invalid.

In which case the tenant would let you as the landlord take the tenant to court because it will only be thrown out at your expense.

Precisely what happened with your case.

However from October 1, 2015, under the Deregulation Act 2015 things have been made much simpler by the introduction of The Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015.

What this means is that a S21 notice is now in a new Prescribed Format which means that the same words are used in a prescribed format for all S21 notices issued.

It becomes less likely that even lay people will make mistakes, though you do need to use the correct document.

There are however some additional requirements which must also be met for the notice to be valid.

You must make sure that you have protected the tenants deposit within 30 days of taking it.

You all should already be doing this either through one of the custodial schemes or through an insurance based scheme.

You also need to have given your tenants an EPC (energy performance certificate), again you should all be familiar with these requirements.

What is perhaps new to some is that you must also have given your tenant a copy of the Gas Safety Certificate.

Again you should already be doing this once a year, however you need to be able to prove that you have serviced these documents.

I would suggest that you now obtain a tenant's confirmation at time of serving to avoid challenges where is becomes your word against your tenant's.

Finally, at the start of each tenancy you now need to issue the following document ‘How to rent: the checklist for renting in England’ and you can down download this from the gov.uk website.

Though as the document states these regulations only apply to England.

Another point to bear in mind is that following the rules laid down in the Spenser v Taylor 2013 case, you can now give your two months notice to your tenants (assuming rent is paid monthly) at any anytime, it does not have to include a date which is the last day of a period of the tenancy.

Please continue to send questions to Steven Sawyer at Sawyers Estate Agents, tel 01453 751647, steven@sawyersestateagents.co.uk