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They replied
They should have called you. Idiots.
You probably should have mentioned in the previous post that you'd already agreed to leave earlier. Check your tenancy agreement - if it says you can give notice by email, well, you can understand how the LL might have interpreted that as notice, even if the format of the notice was unconventional.
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Feel for you mate. My landlord has just evicted us with 2 months notice despite Covid regulations. Deposit not protected, no gas safety certificates, has done negligible repairs and other dodginess I won't put in writing. Still, easier for us to move out rather than dealing with his chaotic landlording.
Hence I've done some research on this - hope it helps. Definitely investigate yourself as I'm no expert. Shelter and Citizen's Advice have all this info. Also I know it's shite having someone try to ride over you and your basic rights, but try to keep things peachy civil. Good for stress levels and any mediation/legal dealings if it comes to it.
- As others have said, how you give your notice to the landlord will be stated in the lease agreement. If not explicitly stated it's normally done in writing and delivered to the landlord's registered address. So no guarantee you gave valid notice with your email.
- Valid notice would have ended the tenancy in July. But you've clearly stayed past the July move out date. Technically both parties should have made a new tenancy agreement, but it sounds like things just carried on as before. Even if there's been no new written contract, if you're still paying the landlord rent and residing at the property, then you have entered into a new AST in the eyes of the law. This will be a rolling tenancy in which you have only to give 1 month's notice. But as it's an AST... well the landlord still owes you 3 or 6 months notice (Covid regs.) depending on when they issued a valid section 21 eviction notice to you
TL;DR - regardless of what the landlord says you still have an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST). You can exit with 1 month's notice, but landlord still needs to give you 3-6 months notice.
Edit: A bit more reading suggests it’s even simpler: by not handing back the keys you never ended the tenancy.
- As others have said, how you give your notice to the landlord will be stated in the lease agreement. If not explicitly stated it's normally done in writing and delivered to the landlord's registered address. So no guarantee you gave valid notice with your email.
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@ewanmac
Eugh... so we wrote a polite email to the landlords pointing out the legal status of the notice period and saying that they could officially serve 3/6 months notice if they wanted but that we wouldn’t be serving our 1 month notice until we had confirmed our completion date for the new property. Either way, the date would not be 30th Oct.
They replied copying in an email thread from February(!!!) saying “ you did give us official notice that you would vacate the property on the 31st July 2020 ” followed by some jibber jabber about verbal agreements, them doing us a favour letting us stay longer, saying we could live with my mum and “we trusted you”. In the email thread my fiancé indeed says “we would like to officially state that we can move out on 31st July 2020 at the very latest.” but that was 7months and a world ago.
I’m more than a little irritated and my fiancé is going to be an hour late for work after a fit of anxious apoplexy worrying about baliffs coming round and taking our things.
As the email thread says we DID have a prior agreement to move out in July, but no formal notice was lodged (at least I don’t think it was... we never received anything formal and I don’t think an email counts as formal notice in our part?).
Since then, in case they haven’t noticed, circumstances have changed somewhat. COVID meant our previous house purchase fell through, and also meant that our landlords could not sell their second home in Mallorca. We all agreed to sit tight and see what happens. Since restrictions have been lifting we have managed to secure a house, we have been friendly and open about our progress but have always stressed that we do not yet know the completion date. Also since restrictions lifted the landlords have sold their Mallorca house and flip flopped about whether they were going to move to Scotland (in which case they would continue renting our flat) or whether they want to knock through into our flat to make an extension. It was only a couple of weeks ago that they came back from Scotland having failed to buy a house and firmly deciding they wanted access to our flat.
Throughout this time we’ve been entirely friendly and open about our house buying but have always stressed that we don’t and can’t know the final completion date until the house is built.
And the suggestion we could live with my mum is doubly irritating. Yes we have discussed that as an option but (A) that was pre COVID, my mum is vulnerable and sheltering, and my fiancé is only partially WFH and (B) it’s none of their fucking business.
Twats!
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