Rémi Barbier asked 3 years ago Hello everyone. My girlfriend and I are in a tricky situation. We’re French and we have been renting a room in a housesharing in Cambridge since November 2020. We haven’t ever stayed in this room because of Covid. We started renting it when we were still living in France, before moving to UK.
In December, as the pandemic changed everything regarding our professional activity, we asked our landlord to sublet the room for a few months.
We found a subtenant but as we had never done that, we didn’t give him any other document but a fixed-term contract made from a template found on internet.
Unfortunately, it turned out that our subtenant is malicious. At the very last moment he refused to send us a copy of his ID and to pay for a deposit pretending it was not legal as our bank account is located in France, he claims he can’t have access to his emails, he refuses to leave and has not paid his rent for a few weeks now. He is telling us he’s about to leave but keeps delaying his departure so we’re now in a very difficult situation: he doesn’t pay rent anymore and we’re stuck as our room is not available.
We saw that we can’t send him a section 21 notice as we haven’t provided him all the legal documents at first, we suppose it will be the same with the section 8 notice.
We thought we were helping someone and making a deal based on confidence, but it tuned out we met the wrong person and underestimated the complexity of renting.
Thanks in advance for your help,
Rémi
Marc Attwater Staff answered 3 years ago One needs to determine if your sub tenant has a licence or an AST by default under the HA 1996. If a licence is what your sub tenant has then the section 8, 21 and other complexities do not come into play.
You should seek legal advice as this needs to be carefully considered before you sere any notice on the sub tenant.
