Almost everybody who leaves a home they did not have to leave does it at the wrong stage — on the strength of a letter, a message, or somebody saying the bailiffs are coming tomorrow.

What you were told, and what the paper says

Nothing is saved and nothing leaves the page. Put the document in front of you and tick only what is actually printed on it. If you were told something out loud that the paper does not say, that difference is the most useful thing on this page.

Why the stage matters more than the wording

• Nothing on paper obliges you to leave by itself. A notice ends a tenancy or asks for possession; it is not permission for anybody to remove you, change a lock, or put your things outside. In almost every European system removal requires a decision by a court or equivalent authority and execution by an authorised officer — and skipping that is not a shortcut, it is an offence.
• Leaving is a decision with consequences, not a neutral act. Walking out on the strength of a letter can end the protections you had, forfeit the deposit dispute, and in many places end the duty a municipality would otherwise have owed you as somebody being evicted rather than somebody who left. This is the single most common expensive mistake, and it is made out of dignity rather than ignorance.
• The opposite mistake costs just as much. Once a court is involved, not answering is how people lose without a hearing. Court documents look boring and arrive in the same kind of envelope as everything else; the difference is a case number and a date by which something must be filed or attended.
• Official-looking is not official. A letter can quote an article of law, use a form number, carry a logo and be printed on heavy paper, and still be a letter from a landlord. A court document names the court and carries a case reference. That distinction is easy to check and almost nobody checks it.
• The words used are not the words that matter. "Final notice", "eviction notice", "you are trespassing after Friday", "the bailiffs are booked" — none of these is a legal category. What the document shows about itself is the thing to read.
• Arrears change the timetable, not the sequence. Owing rent gives a landlord grounds to start the process, and starting it earlier is the main thing arrears change. They do not authorise anybody to bypass the stages, and in most systems a payment arrangement made and kept is what stops the process at any stage.

The six stages, and what each one can actually do

The names differ everywhere. The shape does not: this is the sequence the tool places your paper on, and each stage carries powers the previous one did not.

• 1. A request. A conversation, a message, a letter asking you to go. It carries no power at all. It is worth answering in writing, because a written reply asking for the notice in proper form is often where the whole thing stops.
• 2. A notice. A document that ends the tenancy or requires possession by a date. It starts a period, and at the end of that period the landlord may go to a court — not to your door. A notice with the property, a date and a stated reason is the ordinary case; the parts that are missing are what an adviser looks at first.
• 3. A claim. The landlord asks a court or tribunal to order possession. This is the stage that changes everything about what you should do: there is something to respond to, a deadline to respond by, and usually a hearing you are entitled to attend. Not responding is not neutral here.
• 4. A decision. A court decides, and the order it makes may be immediate, delayed, conditional on payments, or refused. This is where arrears arrangements, children in the household, disability, and the landlord's own conduct over repairs are weighed — which is why attending matters so much.
• 5. An enforcement instruction. An order is not self-executing. Somebody has to ask for it to be enforced, and a date has to be set. In many systems this stage can be postponed or suspended, particularly where circumstances have changed or an arrangement is being kept.
• 6. An authorised officer, on the day. The only stage at which anybody may lawfully make you leave, and only by a person with authority to do it and paperwork to show. Anybody else doing it — a landlord, an agent, a relative, somebody with a van — is not carrying out an eviction, whatever they say.

What is not an eviction, whatever it is called

These are the things to recognise instantly, because they are treated as serious in essentially every European system, and because the right response is completely different from the right response to a notice.

• Changing the locks while you are out. Being shut out of a home you legally occupy is not a step in any process. Ring the police, say the words "I have been locked out of my home", and contact a housing adviser or tenants' union the same day.
• Putting your belongings outside, or removing them. Your things are yours regardless of what is owed. Photograph everything as it is, note the time, and get advice before agreeing to any arrangement about storage.
• Cutting off water, heating, or electricity to force you out. Interference with supply as pressure is treated as harassment in most systems, and it is separately dangerous where there is a child, an older person, or anybody with a health condition in the home.
• Threats, repeated visits, entering without warning. Frequent unannounced entry, shouting, threats to family or immigration status, or bringing people round to intimidate are recognised patterns and are worth recording with dates rather than enduring.
• "You have to be out by tonight." There is no stage of any process that produces an obligation to leave within hours on somebody's word. If you hear this, it is a reason to get advice today, and a reason not to pack.
• The exceptions, said plainly. Where you share the home with the owner, where the arrangement is a lodging or a licence rather than a tenancy, where it is a holiday let, or where you are subletting without permission, the protections are usually much thinner and the sequence can be much shorter. That is exactly why the situation questions above matter, and why a real adviser beats any page.

What to do, in the order that matters

Almost all of the value is in four things, and none of them requires money or a lawyer.

• Keep the paper, and photograph it. Front and back, envelope included, with the date it arrived written on your own note. If it came by message, screenshot the whole thread rather than the one line.
• Do not leave, and do not hand back the keys, before advice. Handing back keys is treated as ending the tenancy voluntarily almost everywhere, and it is very hard to undo. If you feel you cannot stay for safety reasons, that is a different decision and one to make with an adviser who can protect the rest of it.
• Keep paying what you can, and write down every payment. Stopping rent as a protest, even over serious disrepair, hands over the strongest ground there is. Where money is genuinely impossible, a small regular payment plus a written offer is treated very differently from silence.
• Answer in writing, and keep the copy. Ask for the notice in proper form, ask what it is based on, ask for a payment arrangement, ask for the repairs — one short email does all four and creates the record that you engaged.
• Take it to somebody this week. A tenants' union, a housing advice service, legal aid, a municipal housing desk or a tenant helpline. Bring the document, the contract if you have one, and your payment record. Representation changes outcomes at every stage and is usually free.
• If there is a court date, put it above everything else. Attend, or send a written response and ask for the hearing to be moved. Most of the room to breathe in this whole subject exists at that hearing and nowhere else.
• Ask about rehousing before you are homeless, not after. Many places have duties towards households facing eviction that do not apply to households who have already left. Going to the municipality or the housing office with a notice in your hand is early; going with your belongings in a car is late.

What people believe, and what is so

The drill: 16 papers and doorsteps

Sixteen ordinary situations — the message saying be out by Sunday, the official-looking letter quoting an article of law, the envelope with a case number that sat unopened for a fortnight, the locks changed while somebody was at work. Each has a reasonable-sounding response that gives away a stage. Pick the one that holds up; every answer explains why.

The card

Fill it in with the document in front of you and take both to whoever advises you. The bottom block is the part to read before you agree to anything.

🖨️ Print the card