UK Landlord Forum / Life

I'm new here so please be gentle.

I'm the Landlord. I have a tenant who has been on a SPT for 4 years (with three rent increases in the interim), and have recently served them with S21 (presume correctly served for purposes of this). Tenant is not paying rent, but I decided to go the S21 route.

Tenant "defense" to S21 is two fold:

a) Although the deposit was properly protected throughout, and PI issued (countersigned by T), the PI was not reissued when the tenancy became SPT (that long predated Superstrike, an I doubt any landlord in the country would have reissued at that stage). PI and certificate were however reissued shortly subsequent to superstrike, and the Mydeposit status changed to periodic (it was posted to tenant with a certificate of postage but the tenant did not acknowledge receipt or return the countersigned copy which they are clearly not obliged to - and which I cannot force without resorting to illegal methods).

Is this really an issue?

b) Much more worryingly, the tenant claims that I issued them with a new "fixed term" agreement two months prior to S21. There is no evidence for this whatsoever, no related correspondence, no tenancy agreement I have ever seen, and certainly no signed agreement in any shape or form. If there is any documentation (none produced so far) then that would be fabricated. It is not plausible that I would have wished this either.

If the T plans to produce a signed agreement of some sort, that will clearly have to be dealt with. But I doubt the T will be brave enough to do this - but is simply asserting it enough (perhaps with a faked E-mail or two) - and where will it go from here. It seems a neat gambit any tenant served with S21 (or indeed S8) could follow. L then has to go to court to prove a negative. Is it even possible to re-convert a SPT to an AST without having some sort of signed agreement (clearly a tenancy agreement does not have to be in writing at all, but I would have thought that if an AST is a written signed agreement then any amendment to that agreement would have to be in writing, and the SPT would have to be formally ended - in writing - before an AST starts).

Any comments appreciated.