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17/12/25 3:30 pm
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Here is a clause in a tenancy agreement that recently landed a landlord in hot water. Can you spot the problem?
The provisions for service of notices are that if either party send any document in relation to this Agreement to the other, it shall be deemed to have been validly and sufficiently served if delivered to the receiving party’s address or last known address by hand; sent by first class post or by registered post or recorded delivery to [ADDRESS OF LANDLORD] or if sent by email; to the email address provided by the Tenant at the start of the Tenancy…
Whoever drafted this agreement probably intended that notices can be served to their tenant by post.
However, it could be read that notices can be served by post on the landlord but not the tenant, because it only specified the landlord’s address, and the semicolon marks it as an independent clause, standing by itself as a sentence.
I can also tell you a judge called a hearing for this reason alone in a case where the landlord posted a notice seeking possession to their tenant.
Most tenancy agreements contain a clause about how notices are to be served. However, many do not, and this can prove to be a major and costly mistake.
Your eyes might glaze over at this seemingly dull and technical part of the agreement. But a service clause can decide whether a notice is valid or worthless.
The starting point is that notices must be properly served. If the law requires a landlord to give notice - for example under section 21 or section 8 of the Housing Act - that notice only takes effect if it is served in accordance with any valid contractual service clause in the tenancy agreement.
There’s an element of legal fiction here. Even if you know for a fact that your tenant is hiking the Himalayas at the time you serve notice, or the tenanted property has been gutted by fire, your notice can be deemed served on the tenant in a legal sense if delivery complies with the methods specified in the agreement.
That shows you how powerful these clauses can be.
Service clauses really exist for the benefit of the person sending the notice, and every landlord should be making use of this legal tool.
Tenancy agreements should set out out approved methods of service, particularly by first-class post or email. If you post a Section 21 or Section 8 notice to a tenant, and there is no service clause in the agreement to allow this, you will need to get the tenant to acknowledge receipt of the notice in writing. Otherwise, in court, they can simply deny ever receiving the notice. Without a service clause, a judge will almost certainly accept the word of the tenant. The notice will not be deemed served, and the landlord will have to start again, perhaps after waiting months for the expiry of the notice period, and for a court hearing in our clogged county court system.
At Landlord Action we have seen many landlords get burnt just for falling foul to this.
Some clauses go further and specify when service is deemed to take place – for example, the next working day after sending an email. These clauses exist to avoid arguments about whether a notice was actually received.
And we should discuss email at this point. Many landlords nowadays assume service by email is perfectly acceptable, but this only works if the tenant has agreed to receive notices that way. Even then, landlords must be cautious and specify the email address to be used, as some tenants may use several email addresses.
I write this article to warn landlords that technical mistakes matter. The wrong method, the wrong email address, or relying on a poorly drafted service clause can unravel an otherwise perfectly valid claim.
Service clauses are one of those quiet workhorses in tenancy agreements. They don’t attract much attention, until something goes wrong. When they’re clear, they bring certainty. When they’re badly written, they create exactly the disputes they’re meant to avoid.
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