Legal Action

• Reasons for legal action
• Rent arrears
• What do I do if I have received a letter saying I am going to be evicted?
• Eviction - items left in the property

If you break any of the conditions of your tenancy agreement we can take legal action against you. We may apply to court to make you leave your property, or we may apply to court to change a secure tenancy to a demoted tenancy.

Before we take action you may be given the opportunity to discuss the matter with a Tenancy Management Officer or other Council officer. You may also be given the opportunity to correct the situation.

For more details, please read the relevant section of your Tenancy Agreement.

Reasons for legal action

We can apply to a court to make you and anyone living with you leave the property, if:

• you, or anyone living with you or visiting you, do something that breaks your Tenancy Agreement
• you have given false information in your housing application

Rent Arrears

For information about rent arrears, visit our Problems Paying Your Rent? page.

What do I do if I have received a letter saying I am going to be evicted?

• Make sure you have understood the contents of the letter properly
• Contact the Tenancy Management Officer named in the letter
• Get advice from an independent adviser

Eviction - Items left in the property

We will write to you to arrange a date for you to return to the property to collect your belongings.

If you do not reply within five days we will make arrangements to remove the items to storage.

If we do not get a response after five days we will make all reasonable enquiries to find your new contact details.

We will make an inventory and store the items for 28 days before we dispose of any perishable or low value items.

If we cannot trace you will store the items for six months.

Depending on the circumstances you may be liable to pay the storage costs.

Page last reviewed 25 April 2012