Landlord Law Services

Legal help, services and support for private residential landlords

 

Eviction Quick Start Page

The Anatomy of a Possession Claim

There are four stages to bringing a claim for possession.  Unless your tenant moves out voluntarily, you need to go through all four stages.  All are essential.  (This is referred to sometimes by lawyers as ‘due process’.)  

Note – if you are not a logged-in Landlord Law member, only the links marked with red asterisks *** will work for you.
Anatomy of eviction

1. Analysis

This is the most important stage.  Get it wrong, and you are in trouble!  Your eviction claim will take months longer than it should and will almost certainly be a lot more expensive.  

You may even have to cancel your proceedings (which could involve paying your tenant’s legal costs) and start again.

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2. Notices

In almost all situations you need to serve some sort of warning notice on your tenant before you start your eviction claim.

However, this must be the right notice for the type of tenancy and eviction claim being used and must be correctly drafted and given the correct notice period.  You will also need to be able to prove that the notice was served on your tenant.

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3. Court Proceedings for Possession

You can only evict a tenant legally if you have a court order for possession.

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Note that in view of the forthcoming changes being brought in by the Renters Rights Bill (when it becomes law) we are recommending that unless you are very familiar with the eviction procedure, you should instruct solicitors.  However when doing so, make sure you use a firm which is familiar with this work.  Such as one of our recommended solicitors firms.

4. Bailiffs

Even after you get your order for possession – you can’t actually get possession of your property if they refuse to move out, until you have made a bailiffs appointment and they have formally evicted the tenants.

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Note that you can also use the High Court Enforcement Officers but the process is more expensive and you need leave of the court.  If you want to use the High Court service we suggest you use solicitors.

These are all (apart from the telephone advice) member-only services.  Items 3 and 4 are (apart from forum advice) for Business Level members only.

The Telephone Advice Service

If you feel you need to discuss your case with a solicitor, you can book a call with one of the panel solicitors using our Telephone Advice Service.

All the solicitors are specialists in landlord and tenant work and so will be able to give good advice on your case.  Indeed you may want to instruct them later using our

The Landlord Law Recommended Solicitors

Although many landlords have successfully brought a claim for eviction through the courts on their own, it is not as straightforward as many think and a mistake can set your claim back for many months – and you may need to start again from the beginning (in which case you could be vulnerable to an order that you pay your tenants’ legal fees).

We, therefore, have a list of recommended solicitors who are experienced in this work and who can be instructed online via the special Landlord Law (members only) forms for fixed fees.

Non-Members

If you are not a Landlord Law member you can find out more and join online via the button below:

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