Hello all, looking for some advice
Long standing tenant in our property. He was given permission to rent one room to a single adult.
Turns out he was renting to multiple adults (two families with five children) in breach of consent and HMO.
We asked him to leave and he agreed but now the tenants have refused to leave. He has not been living in the property for a few months. He continued to pay rent for a few months while he negotiated with them to leave but has now stopped paying us rent and is non contactable.
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According to shelter if the mesne tenant “surrenders” their tenancy these sub tenants become ours? Is that really how it works? We didnt even know they were all still living there? What would the technical definition of surrender be here?
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Is it a matter of a S21 towards the mesne tenant and eventually Bailiffs to remove everyone
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Are we allowed to increase his rent via a S12 or would this make out situation worse and imply we were ok with the current situation
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Would this still be an unlawful subletting as we never consented to subletting the whole property let alone more than one room/one person.
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Is it worthwhile using a S8 instead or would it be slower risking it being delayed by the judge.
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The subtenants seem to have got our bank details and have tried to transfer the money. We have no way of sending it back? what do we do? We have multiple messages telling them to pay their landlord (mesne tenant). Do we need to do anything specific here?
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The mesne landlord has also told the subtenants that he has transferred his deposit to us. We assumed this was rent. Do we need to protect this?
Thanks!