What can Letting Agents and Landlords do if a tenant provides fraudulent or false information in order to obtain a tenancy- including providing a false landlord reference details or a false employer reference?
As more and more letting agents and landlords take the proactive measure of fully referencing their tenants prior to offering them a tenancy, tenants who “fail” the tenant reference check (by this we mean the tenant reference is returned as declined or high risk (– depending on the company who processed the tenant reference) are therefore denied the opportunity to rent their chosen property.
A small number of potential tenants who do not expect to genuinely pass a tenant reference check, try to cheat the system by deliberately providing false or misleading information in order to ensure a positive tenant reference report is returned. So what information is the most likely to be fraudulent?
Most Common Tenant Lies
- Claim they are a single person (when they are a couple/family) typically to also defraud Tax Credits & Benefits
- Claim they are employed when they are not and provide false employer contact details
- Claim they have lived with parents for the last 3 years to avoid address history which is associated with debt
According to The Housing Act 1996 a landlord is entitled to bring a residential tenancy to an end by obtaining a court order for possession. There are 17 different grounds for eviction, mandatory grounds are 1 to 8, and discretionary grounds 9 to 17 (see a full list of eviction grounds here)
Ground 17 is the particular one which relates to evicting a tenant because of the tenant providing false information.
Ground 17 “Providing a False Statement Knowingly” is a discretionary ground, and therefore, the court would take mitigating and aggravating factors in to consideration when deciding whether to grant an order for possession.
This ground has two significant components:
The landlord is to prove:
(a) They were induced to grant the tenancy by a false statement.
(b) The false statement was made knowingly or recklessly.
Considerations would include:
- Whether the tenant was deliberately misleading on their application or reference in order to influence the decision to grant them a tenancy.
- Whether the landlord had good evidence of the deception, this for example could be the tenancy application form OR the tenant reference application (if completed by the tenant).
- What the false statement actually was, and the extent of the deception – was it a minor deception, for example the length in which the tenant had lived at a previous address, or did they completely fabricate their address history.
The action of the landlord, and the urgency in which they act, can be a factor when the court is considering the seriousness of the deception. This means that the judge may also take in to account how the landlord reacted to the discovery of the false information as a gauge to how serious the landlord considered the deception.It will generally be based on how quickly the landlord acted after discovering the truth about their tenant.
NOTE: If the landlord was slow to act upon discovering the truth about the false information, then it may weaken the perception of its importance.Typical information required by landlords prior to offering a tenancy which should be subject to scrutiny:
- Proof of Residence – bank statement, credit card statement, council tax bill or utility bill dated within the last 28 days.
- Proof of Identify – photo ID, such as a passport or a photo card driving licence.
- Tenancy Application Form /Tenant Reference Application Form – ideally completed and signed by the potential tenant.
- Proof of Income – this ideally needs to be in the form of wage slips which correspond to their bank statements, their employer details should correspond to their tenancy application form.
