Right of access?

In the light of yesterdays news about Greenpeace 'invading' Rishi Sunak's home it made me think about what rights do landlords have to 'invade' the homes of their tenants/contract holders? 

Obviously I am not political in any way and would think twice about suggesting its a bit of a coincidence that Rishi was away and also his security, but its going to become a trespass case for these poor zealots with whose ideology Rishi is in agreement. What about when our tenants refuse us access?

Well, if you got up this morning and someone was on your front lawn or even setting up a tent on the lawn you would likely call the police to have them removed and this is the law as they will be trespassing on your property. This is also true for tenants if there was someone camping on their front lawn, they would be trespassers and could be removed and perhaps arrested as trespassers - even if one of those campers was the landlord! He would be trespassing on his own property!

But could the landlord claim he has the right to go to his property? After all there is usually a 24 hour notice clause in the contract can't we just send them notice and if there is nobody at home enter with our spare keys? The answer is twofold I think. Most importantly, there is no automatic right of access and if you wanted to enforce the 24 hour notice clause it would need to enforced by a court order, this is quite common for example where the tenant refuses the access to conduct a Gas safety inspection - why would they when its for their own safety? But it happens.

Secondly and very importantly, if you do enter (trespass) the property without the tenants present you can be accused of theft and damage etc while you were there and what could your answer be? This I have seen many times over the years, granny's ring went missing,  my new Versace blouses have disappeared! I'll have to report the theft to the police!

In fact even if the tenant agrees a time and meets you at the door and then changes their mind you will not have access that day.

The only hope is to keep a good relationship with the tenant (why wouldn't we want this anyway?) with their future goodwill in these situations in mind. 

It has to be said that along with the tenant's common law, and in Wales the statutory, right to exclude there is the equal opposite obligation to report issues at the property because if you are not allowed in then how can you attend to these issues? Although the Welsh Act has now taken out the concept of Permissive Waste and Damage in clause 101 of the Act a good Occupation Contract will include contractual obligations to report and any failure to do so with` any deterioration will be the tenants obligation to pay for. 

All of this if taken as the baseline for relations between landlord and tenant just shows consideration for each others situations. In my experience relationships between the parties is usually good until a government interference causes a conflict or causes issues that then cause a conflict.