Failure to specify date was fatal to notice

McDonald and another v Fernandez and another (CA TLR 9 October)

Section 21(4) a of the Housing Act 1988 provides that a court shall make an order for possession of a dwelling house let on an assured shorthold tenancy which was a periodic tenancy if the court is satisfied that the landlord has given to the tenant a notice in writing stating that, after a date specified in the notice, being the last day of a period of the tenancy and not earlier than two months after the date the notice was given. Is a notice which did not specify any date that was to be the last day of the periodic tenancy, but required for possession to be given on a date that was the date immediately following the last day of a periodic tenancy a valid notice within s21(4)a? The answer was ‘No’. The statute required the notice to specify a date that was the last date of the period. The statute did not require the landlord to specify a date on which he required possession. The notice was not a notice to quit. The landlord could not get possession without the tenant’s consent unless he went to court. That was why the statute required the landlord to state that possession was required ‘after a date specified in the notice, being the last day of a period of the tenancy’. One purpose of the section might be to alert tenants to the need to look for alternative accommodation, but another was to give the courts a clear and simple set of criteria which triggered their mandatory duty to order possession. Accordingly, the notice did not comply with s21(4)(a).