Where have the prescribed notices gone from the compliant letters and agreements pack?

For anyone who subscribes to the Compliant Letters and Agreements pack supplied to you by The Letting Centre, hopefully you will have seen the alerts that we put up on Thursday the 27th August 2020 and again on Tuesday 1st September, but just in case you missed them, please see a summary below.

Changes have been introduced to the notice requirements under Section 8 and Section 21 of the Housing Act and there has been no clarification over the fact two versions of the prescribed forms remain. Until such clarification has been provided, The Letting Centre have decided to remove the section 21 and section 8 prescribed forms from the Letting Centre legal forms pack. So you will no longer be able to access these via the Compliant Letters and Agreements tab.

For a full explanation from The Letting Centre themselves, please see below:

Section 21 (Form 6A) and Section 8 (Form 3) Notices

The Letting Centre have removed the Section 21 and Section 8 prescribed notices from the pack. The Letting Centre takes the view that it is no longer possible to supply these types of prescribed forms due to legal uncertainty. Since 2020, the only way for landlords and agents to use the correct ‘official form’ with certainty is by downloading the latest form from the Government website, and even legal experts disagree about the validity of other versions of these forms supplied by external providers. This is not an ideal situation when the success of a possession action can be determined by a dispute over the standard wording of the possession notice and is further compounded by current practice where the Government give little or no notice of the introduction of a new version of the prescribed form – hence making previous versions invalid.

The Government versions can be accessed below:

• Section 21 Form 6A Notice

• Section 8 Form 3 Notice

These forms are prescribed by legislation and need to be provided as prescribed or substantially to the same effect therefore making it more difficult to issue to our software customers where little or no notice, and lack of clarity, is given by the Government when a new version is introduced.

You should check with your legal advisor to ensure that the correct notice is served.

The Letting Centre, 2022

Whenever we make any changes to the Compliant Letters and Agreements, we always provide you with an alert in your "View Alerts!" section which you can locate next to your profile at the top of your Expert Agent screen so please do read these alerts to ensure you are kept up to date.