Landlords be careful claim for possession for N5B does not have mandatory fields | Discuss

I went to court yesterday for a section 21 possession order.

The CAB duty solicitor who was acting free for the tenant at the tax payers expense (even though the tenant had already spent two months UC and who lied to the court about never receiving any of the statutory documents etc, etc) realised that the form N5B Claim form for possession of a property located in England had a box not ticked.

The box was below question 11. Is the landlord a private registered provider of social house? The box allows you to tick Yes or No. However, if you tick “No” it does not make sure that any of the future boxes are mandatory and therefore if you do not tick the yes or fill in the next box about documents provided the case will be struck out.

The CAB solicitor then asked the tenant the loaded question “Have you seen this document” whilst holding up the how to rent guide and well!! What do you know the tenant said “NO”

As veteran landlords, who have been here before, we proved to the judge that our systems showed the tenant must have seen the how to rent guide. (This is included in the Tenant Referencing UK application forms) The judge accepted our submission and told the CAB solicitor that he did not want to strike out the case but would accept that if we agreed he would grant the CAB’s request for the maximum 42 days before possession. We agreed as we did not want to go through the whole episode again and agreed with the maximum of 42 days and of course that means another 42 days without a rent payment.

Lesson learnt so my message to all is be very careful of these forms because they do not have mandatory fields and they will try and trip you up and get the case thrown out if you miss a box or a section.