Social tenants have extensive rights and can only be evicted if a series of mandatory procedures are followed to the letter. In one case that raised novel issues, the Court of Appeal ruled that the requirements of the Housing Act 1996 had been met and that an introductory tenancy had been lawfully brought to an end.
The case concerned an introductory tenant of a council flat who was in rent arrears and who had assaulted a female visitor to the block’s lobby area. The council served him with notice to terminate the lease under Section 128 of the Act. A district judge initially accepted the validity of the notice and granted a possession order.
However, a more senior judge subsequently found that the notice was invalid in that it did not meet the mandatory requirements of the Act. It did not inform the tenant that, if he needed help, he should take the document to the Citizens Advice Bureau or other appropriate agency.
In upholding the council’s challenge to that ruling, the Court noted that the required information was contained within a leaflet that had been sent to the tenant at the same time as the notice. Any reasonable tenant would have realised that the notice and the leaflet needed to be read together in order to understand the action that the council was proposing to take. Although the language used fell short of expressly incorporating the contents of the leaflet into the notice, the two documents functioned together as one.
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