[iii][iv][6] The court has no power to grant any adjournment or stay of execution from enforcement unless the tenant has a disability discrimination, public law or human rights defence,[6] or the case is pending an appeal.
[14] Assured shorthold became the default type of private residential tenancies from the commencement of section 96 of the Housing Act 1996 on 28 February 1997.
[vii][15][16] Section 21 of the 1988 Act provides two different mechanisms under which a landlord can give notice to obtain possession of their property.
[x] The legislation does not specify whether the notice may expire before the end of the fixed term in the absence of a break clause, and no clear precedent has been established on the topic.
[19] Until the Court of Appeal judgment in Spencer v Taylor,[A] it was generally thought that a notice may only be given under subsection (1)(b) during a fixed term tenancy.
[23][24] Following a decision by the Master of the Rolls with agreement of the Lord Chancellor, additional restriction came in on 27 March 2020 suspending all new and ongoing housing possession action nationally for 90 days.
[24] On 5 June 2020, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Robert Jenrick announced via Twitter that suspension of eviction was to be extended for a further two months.
[28][29] The Welsh Government further increased the minimum length of notice for properties in Wales to six months from 24 July 2020.
[32] No section 21 notice may be given if the landlord is required to obtain a licence, whether under a mandatory or additional licensing scheme for a house in multiple occupation or a selective licensing scheme for a designated area, while the property is unlicensed and an application for a licence is not pending.
4 and Transitional, Transitory and Saving Provisions) Order 2012 provided for a 30 days amnesty period for existing deposit to be protected if a landlord was not already in compliance.
Alternatively, a section 21 notice may be given if the tenant or the person who paid the deposit on behalf of the tenant has made an application to the county court against the landlord for a penalty under section 214(1) of the 2004 Act, and the claim has been determined by the court, withdrawn or settled.
[xxvii] From 26 March 2015, if the successive tenancies are for the same or substantially the same property, a landlord is deemed to have complied with the requirements if at the start of a new tenancy the deposit continued to be held in accordance with the same authorised scheme as when the requirements were last complied with by the landlord.
[xxviii][37] The Deregulation Act 2015 introduced a number of changes imposing new obligations on landlords, failure to comply with which renders any section 21 notices served to be invalid.
[xxxii][33][37] A landlord is exempted from this section if the condition that gave rise to the notice by the authority is due to a failure by the tenant to use the property in a tenant-like manner, or at the time of the notice the property is genuinely on the market for sale, or if the landlord is a private registered provider of social housing, or the section 21 notice is given as a result of a mortgagee exercising a power of sale on the mortgagor after a default.
This form replaced the form originally prescribed under the Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015 before it came into effect, as a result of the original containing a significant error regarding how long a notice is valid for.
[xxix][xl] An updated Form 6A was prescribed on 1 June 2019 to coincide with the commencement of the Tenant Fees Act 2019.
A modified Form 6A was published on the government's website on 26 March 2020 to reflect the longer notice period required under the Coronavirus Act.
[xlv][xlvi][43] Government guidelines published by the Department for Communities and Local Government (as it then was) in December 2017 suggested that an energy performance certificate is not required to be given where the tenancy is for an individual room as the tenancy would not be for a building or a building unit designed or altered for separate use.
[44] It is unclear if lack of an energy performance certificate in such a tenancy would invalidate a section 21 notice.
The facts of the case and wording of the judgments however leaves open the possibility that a lack of a valid gas safety certificate at the time when the tenant first went into occupation under the tenancy remains an irremediable breach.
[48] On 26 June 2018, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government published a new version of the guide with the title "How to...
[51] Where the tenancy is bought to an end before the end of a period of the tenancy as a result of the service of a section 21 notice, and the tenant had paid rent in advance for that period, the tenant is entitled to a repayment of rent paid for days where they were not in occupation.
[lv] The Housing (Wales) Act 2014 introduced mandatory registration for all landlords and their properties.