Landlords – Gaining access to your property

SteveAnthea, Business

It is illegal for you as a landlord to enter your own property without prior agreement from your tenant. Landlords do have rights to ‘reasonable’ access to carry out repairs for which they are responsible, but you will always need to get permission from the tenant with at least 24 hours prior notice. If you don’t follow this process you could be prosecuted for ‘harassment’.

Under any kind of lease or tenancy, a landlord is required by common law to allow his tenants ‘exclusive possession’ and ‘quiet enjoyment’ of the premises during the tenancy.

Basically this means a landlord cannot enter the property except for ‘good reason’. If you are unsure, you could get some advice from your local housing advice centre or Citizens Advice Bureau.

If it is proving difficult to gain access for essential building works or could it be that you are just attempting to complete a property inspection and the tenant is not allowing access for an inspection to take place, you may have to resort to evict the tenant, to complete the necessary works:

How to evict a tenant

There are three stages to this in most cases:

  1. The tenancy agreement should normally specify a notice period that you can give your tenants to vacate the property.
  2. If the tenants remain in the property at the end of the notice period you can apply to the courts for a possession order.
  3. If you get the possession order granted and the tenant does not comply, you can then apply for an eviction warrant from the county court. The county court will then arrange to send in the bailiffs.

At Anthea lettings we off a Free Eviction Service.

Don’t know what to do with your problem tenant?

First of all… don’t worry, we can help. All you need to do is give us the instruction, and we’ll relieve your headache. In fact Anthea Lettings have over 10 years’ experience at resolving problems just like yours; leaving you confident to approach us on the basis that we will achieve the result you want.

Upon instruction we’ll visit the tenant on your behalf, typically in order to advise of the required possession of the property, and to issue a notice, in order to gain legal possession of the property.