A landlord is not supposed to enter a property without the tenants permission.

It can be very worrying and sometimes downright distressing if your landlord keeps coming in to your property without your permission.

Some landlords will stop if you ask them to.  However other landlords appear to think, erroneously, that becuase they own the property, they have the right to enter it when they wish.

In fact that is completely wrong.  When a property is let to a tenant, it is in effect ’sold’ to the tenant for a slice of time.

During that time the landlord has few rights over it.  They have the right to receive the rent, and the right to get the property back at the end of the tenancy, but not a lot else.

So although the tenancy agreement may, for example, say that the tenant cannot change the locks, the only way that the landlord can enforce this, if the tenant does change the locks, is to go to court and get an injunction.

And no Judge is going to make an injunction ordering the tenant to hand over a set of keys to the landlord, if the reason the tenant has changed the locks is that the landlord keeps  coming into the property without permission.

Because if the landlord does this he too will be in breach of the tenancy agreement.

All tenancy agreements have a clause known as the ‘covenant for quiet enjoyment’.  This does not mean that the tenants have to be quiet or that they must enjoy themselves.  It means that the landlord must leave them in peace to live at the property without disturbance.

The covenant of quiet enjoyment is a fundamental tenants right, and a Judge will consider it to  be a serious one.  So, yes, if your landlord keeps coming on to your property without permission, you CAN change the locks!

You can read more about this >> here on my Landlord Law Blog.

Tags: courts, landlord and tenant, legal services, tenancy