Mail

[lou]

A friend of mine let her property, she didn't have her mail redirected by Royal Mail (no idea why she didn't use this service!) but contacted the companies and informed them of her new address, but asked the tenant if any mail happened to arrive for her to give it to a neighbour who would then send it on to her. In the 3 weeks since the tenant left there has been a lot of mail still arriving at the house and one being a court summons for a bill my friend forgot about - it was for quite a small amount but the tenant didn't forward any previous letters, she now has to appear in court next week, and the small amount is now quite a large amount due to interest and charges.

My friend is saying the tenant was responsible for passing the letters to the neighbour as requested, the tenant is saying she didn't know she was to pass the letters to the neighbour and assumed that her mail was being redirected or that she had changed her address and any mail that arrived was junk and therefore got rid of it.

I say that my friend was in the wrong, should have arranged it with Royal Mail and the tenant cannot be held responsible for redirecting the mail for a year, also where does the tenant stand with getting rid of some of the mail that arrived?

I would be grateful if anyone could offer any help in this matter, many thanks.

[davidjohnbutton]

Tenants are under no obligation to send on any mail which is delivered to their address for other people - what they should do however is return it to the sender.

As for the court summons - all the friend has to do is make the court aware that she never received the summons because ofthe change of address and the process can then be re-started - she may be given an opportunity to settle the bill before the fresh summons is reissued.

[Ericthelobster]

Do tenants and/or landlords really have a legal obligation, if not to forward mail to a previous occupants new address, then to trog down to the post box with oodles of mail (99% of which is manifestly junkmail)?

If so, should it be written into ASTs that tenants are responsible (a) for arranging their mail to be forwarded once the tenancy terminates and (b) that during their tenancy, they are legally responsible for returning any mail addressed to previous occupiers, back to the senders?!

I've done the RTS thing myself in the past, but got pretty hacked off when the same stuff keeps on arriving month after month from the same organisation (showing that nobody's acted upon the 'RTS').

By the way, from experience I have found that registering my properties with http://www.mpsonline.org.uk is hugely and rapidly effective in dealing with tenants junkmail...

[zoe]

Do tenants and/or landlords really have a legal obligation, if not to forward mail to a previous occupants new address, then to trog down to the post box with oodles of mail (99% of which is manifestly junkmail)?

the answer is no - they do no have a legal obligation to do this.

[lou]

Many thanks for your replies this has helped - think the landlord realises she is in the wrong but wants to blame someone other than herself!

Many thanks again.

[Nora Kay]

Zoe,
Are you sure about this? I have always been under the impression that it is an offence to tamper with or destroy other people's mail. I would think that the least a new occupier could do would be to send it back "gone away", even if it is too much trouble to write a forwarding address on the envelope.

My daughter had the same experience as Lou's friend. She had a speeding fine issued to her after she had gone abroad and let her house. Despite asking the tenant to forward on any mail to myself - she even gave him sticky labels with the forwarding address on - nothing was redirected to me, but on vacating after 6 months, the tenant calmly handed me 6 months' worth of letters - including a court summons for non payment of the fine!
Fortunately the case was dismissed after I gave the facts to the court.

[Paul_f]

Nora. Zoe is dead right. Also read David Button's post! Remember the Post Office will now destroy any badly addressed mail unless the sender's name is clearly written on the back.

If mail arrives for a previous tenant, it's absolutely nothing to do with the current occupant and they have no obligation to do anything about it. If they "bin" it they are not committing any offence.

You cannot impose onerous terms on a tenant as it would be unfair under the UTCCR's 1999. That's why they are in place.

[Jennifer_M]

Considering that in rented properties you can get mail addressed to the last 10 tenants to have lived there it's a good job you don't have to forward it or send it back or you'd spend your life on it.