The government has finally introduced measures to help prevent tenants from being evicted from their property without any notice by the mortgage company. This has been causing untold misery and inconvenience to families up and down the country. In brief this will give the tenant the same right as if they were being served notice under Section 21.

In this age of austerity the number of possession orders granted for private rented properties by mortgage lenders in 2009 was a small but significant share of the 40,000 repossessions in 2009.
The problem for tenants, local councils and letting agents was that many families were being made homeless, through no fault of their own, at a moment’s notice. From October 2010 the Government have therefore introduced the Mortgage Repossessions (Protection of Tenants etc) Act 2010.
This provides tenants who have not been authorised by the mortgage lender, with the right to request a delay to eviction of up to two months. If a landlord falls into arrears with the mortgage payments and the lender commences possession proceedings, the tenant can now apply for a delay to the possession date.
This puts an ‘unauthorised’ tenant on a level playing field with ‘authorised’ tenants holding an assured shorthold tenancy. It is not intended to grant ‘unauthorised’ tenants any greater rights than they would have if they were ‘authorised’ tenants.
The term ‘unauthorised tenants’ refers to those tenants who are renting a mortgaged residential property from a landlord who has let the property without the knowledge or consent of the lender, and in contravention of the mortgage agreement

Such a tenancy is known as an ‘unauthorised tenancy’ because the tenancy agreement is unenforceable against the lender.
When letting a mortgaged property on which there is a residential mortgage, the borrower should obtain consent from their lender. Tenants whose landlord has such consent are ‘authorised’ tenants and this legislation does not apply to them as they have comparable existing rights.
In addition to this, the lender must follow a set procedure in respect of notifying the relevant parties which will now also include the local council. They must, within five days of hearing of a court date, send a notice addressed to the tenant or occupier detailing the following:

• state that a possession claim for the property has started
• show the name and address of the claimant, the defendant and the court which issued the claim form and
• give details of the hearing
This new act will obviously not stop repossessions being sought by lenders but will give ‘unauthorised tenants’ the same time that ‘authorised tenants’ have in respect of finding suitable alternative accommodation.