There are 2 separate issues here.
One is about the OP wanting to sell her property. As a LL she can legally serve a S21 at the appropriate time and hope the tenant moves out, usually 2 months as a minimum later. Without doubt, this is a difficult situation for any tenant. As has been said, a new deposit will need to be found for a new property, possible period of needing to pay 2 lots of rent if there is some overlap, stress and inconvenience of moving and possibly uprooting children from schools etc. Its legal but difficult for tenants and most tenants struggle to out their hands on the extra couple of £k needed to fund it. It’s disingenuous to suggest a tenant should be financially prepared for such an eventuality and are failing in their responsibilities if they haven’t got that cash to hand. By very nature, we know renters often are not as financially well off as LLs and don’t have large savings or spare cash. Expecting them to be able to weather that financial storm, which is foisted on them using a timescale totally out if their control, is not at all equivalent to expecting a LL to be able to weather the financial storms of changing interest rates, property prices etc. A LL has CHOICE about if and when to sell, looking for other mortgage rates etc. It is their poor planning if they mortgage themselves up to the hilt and can’t cope with an increase in interest rates or maintenance bills. Given their financial choices impact someone else’s life too and they are the supplier of an essential service, it is essential they are in a strong enough financial position to meet their obligations.
The issue of the tenant not having paid their rent is a separate issue. The OP is clearly wanting to sell regardless if this as she wants to free up the cash from the property for her growing family. So actually, even if the tenant had been the perfect tenant, OP would probably still be looking to arrive notice in the New Year. That is entirely legal if done correctly. However, OP has suggested multiple times that it’s because Tenant has been a bad tenant and poor payer. Actually, it’s not really about that, although perhaps OP is using the couple of incidents of delayed payment (which have later morphed into suggestions that this tenant has never paid their rent or is a serial non-payer, when OP did not given any evidence of that across their 18 month tenancy) to help justify issuing an S21 to herself. Most LLs don’t like to evict good tenants. Most acknowledge it creates difficulties and stress and a natural end to a tenancy is the ideal. Most do it reluctantly and try to time it a bit, but when they don’t, sometimes justifying it in their own mind as ‘deserved’ which is what OP did (references to tenant as ‘Dick’ and even as ‘wanker’ albeit crossed out) certainly suggest she thinks they deserve it. That’s pretty unpleasant, even if later claimed as tongue in cheek.
The thing is, yes it’s a business and yes it’s right that LLs can get their property back through legal methods and that if there are genuine issues of non-payment, damage, etc, that there is a robust system to evict tenants (and probably that system isn’t robust enough) but tenants should be treated like people and given the respect that clients….which is what they are, deserve. Calling them ‘Dicks’ or ‘Wankers’ shows an attitude towards tenants. Others in this thread have showed a similar attitude towards tenants as some kind of lesser-being who just need to be ‘got rid of’ with zero interest in considering the situation behind delayed payment of rent, or what will happen next. For some people on this thread, the LL is the property owner and even though by signing an AST the tenant gains some legal rights, to some, those rights are an annoyance and not really deserved, but fair game to try and subvert, because really tenants as non-owners shouldn’t actually have any rights.
Thats why multiple times, people have suggested tenants OUGHT to allow viewings. Even those who understand there absolutely is no legal requirement and deposits cannot be withheld over this regardless of what ASTs might say, many believe that a tenant is unreasonable or difficult or obstructive not to allow it….that the owner has a right to push for viewings to happen and should be able to expect Co-operation. And this is after multiple people have described how instructive, upsetting and just how often these might happen. Still, people don’t think that having paid many many thousands in rent, entitles tenants to the quiet enjoyment of the property the tenant has paid for. Still people think that the owner’s desire to start seeking must surely trump the legal right and the actual desire if the tenant to not have this happen.
I’m a LL and I don’t like the narrative of all or most LLs are scum that can emerge. However, I also don’t like the other one that appears too, about tenants being feckless,nor somehow lesser beings. In the end, tenants don’t have security of tenure. Given the competing interests of LLs and their need to be able to sell within certain timeframes, it’s probably the case that tenants will never have the security of tenure they’d like. As homeowners, people often don’t realise just how important that is and how devastating having to regularly move can be. As homeowners, people should appreciate the security they have that tenants usually simply don’t have. Some kind of acknowledgement of that, rather than suggestions that tenants are lesser beings for not having managed to get a deposit together to buy, would be better than suggestions that tenants should be grateful to be provided with an place to live at an expensive rate and should be bending over backwards to let LLs visit any time that they fancy it, or to market the property extensively so they can sell it from under their very feet.
The lack of empathy staggers me.