12 Landlord’s notice to quit

8.57 The landlord may have served notice to quit (under Case G) following the tenant’s death. In this event, as we have seen, the notice to quit is suspended if an application for succession is made, pending the outcome of the succession proceedings.¹¹⁰ If at the end of the three-month period following death only one application has been made, then the landlord’s application for consent must be made within two months after service on him of the application for succession.¹¹¹ Where more than one application for succession has been made, the landlord’s application for consent must be made before the expiry of two months after the tribunal notifies him that the number of such applications is reduced to one.¹¹² The secretary to the tribunal must inform the landlord where a reduction in the number of succession applications to one has occurred and time runs from this date.

8.58 Where the applicant for succession has established he is both ‘eligible’ and ‘suitable’ for the grant of a tenancy, the tribunal must go on to consider the landlord’s application for consent to the operation of his notice to quit before it makes a direction entitling the applicant to a tenancy. By virtue of s 44(2) of the 1986 Act the landlord must establish one of the five grounds for tribunal consent set out in s 27.¹¹⁴ The notice is treated, in other words, as a normal unqualified notice to quit. If the landlord is invoking the ‘greater hardship’ test and wishes to allege hardship to persons other than himself, he must give details in his application of those person(s) and the hardship on which he is relying.¹¹⁵ Having established one of the five grounds in s 27 he must then also establish that a ‘fair and reasonable landlord’ would in the circumstances demand possession.

8.59 If the tribunal consent to the operation of the landlord’s notice they must dismiss the application for succession. They have power to postpone the operation of the notice to quit if it is to take effect within three months of the tribunal’s decision. On the tenant’s application they may specify a new operative date, which may be not later than the end of three months beginning with either:

(a)The original operative date, or

(b)The date on which the tribunal give their consent to the operation of the notice,

whichever is the later.¹¹⁶