Landlords - this ONE MISTAKE could delay you from serving notice
Expert guidance from Nik Lewis, Operations Director at CPS Homes. Follow Nik over at The Cardiff Letting Agent.
I’ve had the same situation catch out two self-managing landlords in the last week, so this is one to be aware of.
Both landlords gave their tenants six months’ notice to leave because they needed their properties back.
On receipt of the notice, both tenants sought advice, one from the Council and the other from Citizens Advice, and both landlords were told exactly the same thing.
Their notices were invalid because they never gave the tenants the written statements they were legally required to provide when the Renting Homes (Wales) Act came in.
The paperwork you thought you’d already dealt with...
These are tenants who have lived there for years, and the landlords were vaguely aware of the law change in December 2022, but assumed their old tenancy agreement was enough, or simply never appreciated that missing the new paperwork could come back to bite them later.
Under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act, existing tenancies converted to occupation contracts on 1 December 2022, and landlords had until 1 June 2023 to provide the new written statement.
And this is where it gets painful.
You can't just fix it and serve notice again
The landlords can’t simply issue the written statement today and serve another notice tomorrow.
Where a landlord was late providing the written statement, they cannot give a landlord’s notice for six months after the written statement is provided.
That notice then gives the tenant another six months to leave.
So something the landlord failed to do back in 2023 could now leave them at least a year away from regaining possession.
That’s the part that’s easy to miss with compliance. The mistake might have happened years ago, but the consequences may not become apparent until the day you actually need to take action.
Written statements aren't the only thing that can catch you out!
And written statements are only one example.
Gas safety records, EICRs, EPCs, deposit compliance and other requirements can all affect whether a landlord can serve a valid notice. Welsh Government guidance specifically sets out restrictions relating to things including written statements, EPCs, deposits, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, electrical safety and gas safety.
So it isn't simply a case of checking whether your property is compliant today.
You also need to know whether the right paperwork was provided, the right certificates were issued and the right steps were followed at the right time.
Compliance problems don't always show up straight away
And that’s the difficult thing about getting compliance wrong.
You don’t always discover the consequence at the time.
Sometimes everything appears to carry on as normal for years, until you need to do something like regain possession of the property, and suddenly an old paperwork issue becomes a very real problem.
This is where good property management matters
And that’s a big part of what a good managing agent should be doing in the background.
Keeping everything in order throughout the tenancy, rather than only looking at compliance when something goes wrong.
Because when a landlord does eventually need their property back, the last thing you want is to discover there’s a problem with something that should have been dealt with years ago.
For landlords in Wales, compliance isn’t just about ticking boxes. It’s about making sure those boxes were ticked at the right time and kept up to date throughout the tenancy.
If you found this useful and want straightforward landlord tips, property updates and practical advice without the jargon, come and follow me over at The Cardiff Letting Agent on Instagram.
The information contained within this article was correct at the date of publishing and is not guaranteed to remain correct in the present day.
