Please can anyone with housing knowledge advise as my friend is basically being pushed out of his own home.
My friend decided to rent rooms out in his house to two individual guys - one bedroom each and use of kitchen etc. He thought they were lodgers but in the worst case scenario licensees who he could ask to leave on a month’s notice. They paid a deposit. All was fine for 6 months. My friend then went overseas for 9 months to look after a sick parent. He left the key with relatives, so they could keep an eye on the property and check on his stuff as he left most of his belongings behind and had his own locked bedroom there.
This is when things started to go wrong. The lodgers continued to pay rent but refused to let his relatives in to look at the property and would not allow estate agents round to value the property when my friend decided to put it on the market, so he was unable to sell it. They also took it upon themselves to get the electricity and gas account put into their own names without permission.
My friend is now back and wants them out of his house. He has tried to obtain advice on the position, but most helplines are there to protect tenants from rogue landlords and not the other way around. He is now being forced to live in his own house with people he does not want there, and they can be quite aggressive towards him.
He has spoken to the local council who told him there is nothing he can do about this as he was out of the country for some time. He also spoke to a solicitor who is supposed to specialise in tenancy law but what he has been told sounds a bit off to me. He was told that because they have been in the property for over a year and he was out of the country for more than 6 months the licence automatically becomes a tenancy. He was told he needs to serve a section 21 notice. I thought this was only used in the case of assured shorthold tenancies which is not the case here and I did not think it was possible for an arrangement to morph into an ast. It may be key to this discussion as to whether they had exclusive possession of the house. To begin with he lived there with them, then when he went abroad they still never had full possession of the whole property (he always had a bedroom there) and it was intended that his relatives could pop in to see if everything was ok and to stay in his room if they wanted but the lodgers always refused them entry. Surely the lodgers should not be able to argue that they had exclusive possession of a property where they stopped others gaining authorised entry or is it the fact that he was out of the country that gives the lodgers exclusive possession (although as I said above he still had his own locked room). He has also been told he now needs to go to the expense of getting several things associated with a tenancy such as a rented property licence from his borough in order to let the property (and until then this arrangement that he does not want to even exist puts him at risk of a £30,000 fine for illegal letting) and things such as gas safety certificates.
Does any of this sound right? Has anyone got any advice on this or could they perhaps point me in the direction of a help line that might help? The citizens advice bureau said they cannot help him as they are there for tenants and not landlords (odd as I would have thought he was still a "citizen") and Shelter said the same thing. There must be a way for him to get these men out of his home and who are basically holding him to ransom. Thanks.