Section 8 notice

Possession - Section 8 and Section 21

We have a tenant who moved into our property last year and took a 12 month AST.

The tenancy was conducted satisfactorily for the initial few months and the first need to contact the tenant was when Decembers rental payment was not received. January’s rental payment was also not received and when we managed to contact the tenant we were advised that they had been burgled with the cash for the rent having been stolen.

We contacted the local police to see if we could assist with the investigation and to understand how the burglars had gained entry. We were advised that the incident was not being treated as a burglary and a ‘guest’ at the property may have stolen the money. The conversations with the police revealed there had been other incidents at the property and the neighbors had lodged complaints about our tenant.

Neighbors then contacted us, as landlord, and since January we have received many further complaints about the tenants behavior towards neighbors, condition of property and increased crime in the street allegedly as result of visitors to the property.

The local environmental health are involved and in conjunction with the police are attempting to get the tenant to sign an acceptable behavior agreement.

A Section 8 notice was served in when the rental arrears reached two months however as the arrears were quickly repaid we were unable to enforce the section 8 notice on this basis.

We intend to serve the Section 21 notice to terminate the tenancy when the 12 months expire. Is there any further action that we could take in the meantime?