What legal action against anti-social tenants can a landlord take?
Our landlord services department was instructed by a housing association which had been receiving a number of reports of nuisance and disturbance at one of their tenanted properties. The tenant’s behaviour was unpleasant. They had been failing to keep the property in good order, especially outside where they had a battered sofa in the front garden and other detritus, including evidence of repeated dog fouling. They also held regular and very noisy parties until the small hours of the morning with evidence of drug use and were especially foul-mouthed if anybody asked them to moderate their behaviour. Regular visits by the police did not appear to have any effect either.
The neighbours of the tenant had been making complaints to the housing association for a long period of time, asking the association to do something about their noisy neighbour.
Technically, a landlord is not legally responsible for the behaviour of their tenant and is not required to take any action, but setting that aside, it is good practice for landlords to try and mediate and deal with these issue to keep the neighbours happy in the long term. After all, the tenant may not be there for the longterm but the landlord usually is. Given that other properties in the area were owned by the housing association, it was in their best interests to maintain their reputation locally and to maintain good relations with the authorities.
Usually there is a clause in a tenancy agreement requiring the tenant not to cause a nuisance. In this instance there was such a clause which meant the tenant was breaking the terms of the tenancy. But even without it, a landlord can cite nuisance as one of the grounds for seeking possession: either where the court orders possession where the tenant has breached one of the five anti-social behaviour conditions; or where the court orders possession because the tenant has caused a nuisance to others in the locality, or is using the premises for illegal or immoral purposes.
The housing association wrote to and spoke to the tenant on a number of occasions, asking him to moderate his behaviour, but without much success. We therefore issued possession proceedings against him and were successful in obtaining possession of the property from the tenant
Although the housing association did not recover any legal costs from the tenant as he was unemployed and in receipt of benefits, with our fixed fee residential repossession scheme the costs were manageable and it was worth the expense to the association. The neighbours are now much happier, and the property itself has been cleaned up, redecorated and re-let. In addition, the housing association has preserved its good relationship with the other occupiers in the vicinity and satisfied the local authorities – the police, and the council – by taking prompt action.
