Abandoned storage units: the Torts Act process for operators

Many operators meet this eventually: a customer stops paying their licence fee, stops answering emails and calls, and the unit sits there — full of someone else's belongings, earning nothing, and quietly becoming the most legally delicate square footage on your site. The temptation is to treat a silent, unpaid unit as a problem you can simply clear. It is not. The goods still belong to the customer, and in England and Wales a statutory route to selling them runs through the notice procedure in the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977.

This is a guide to the operator's process — deliberately not "storage auction" content for bargain hunters. If you follow the Act's procedure and its conditions are met, the Act entitles you, as against the customer, to sell the goods and to deduct from the proceeds what fell due before the notice, plus the costs of sale. If you shortcut it, you may commit conversion, and you can be liable for the value of the goods, which can far exceed the debt you were trying to recover.

What "abandoned" actually means

In this guide, an abandoned unit is one where the customer is in arrears and has stopped responding — as defined by the terms of your storage licence, not by a gut feeling. In practice that means a stated period of unpaid licence fees plus documented, repeated attempts to make contact that have gone unanswered. Abandonment is a conclusion you evidence, never a label you reach for because a unit looks forgotten.

Two things follow from that definition. First, "abandoned" does not mean "ownerless": the goods remain the customer's property unless the customer has truly given them up, and you remain their custodian — in the Act's language, a bailee holding a bailor's goods — with real duties attached. Second, the framework here is bailment and contract, not property law's heavyweight machinery: a genuine storage licence is not a tenancy, so your customer is a licensee rather than a tenant. Your rights include those your licence terms and the 1977 Act give you.

That is why the licence agreement matters so much. It can expressly give you a lien (the right to hold the goods while sums are owed), a power of sale after due process, and the right to suspend access on default. Section 12 and Schedule 1 of the Act have effect subject to the terms of the bailment (section 12(8)), so what your agreement says about all three matters before you reach the statute.

The escalation ladder, stage by stage

Disposal is the last rung of a ladder, and every rung below it should genuinely have been climbed — and recorded. If a sale is disputed, you will want to be able to show that the Act's conditions were met: the notice, how it was served, a notice period that gave the customer a reasonable opportunity of taking delivery, the method of sale and the accounting. Your records are the answer.

Note what stage 2 involves in this guide's process: not that an overlock was requested, but that it is confirmed applied. Everything downstream leans on your having actually exercised the right to suspend access — a named person recording that the padlock is physically on is worth more than a system entry saying one was scheduled.

The Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977 framework

The statutory route to selling uncollected goods is the notice-and-sale procedure in sections 12–13 and Schedule 1 of the 1977 Act, which is what actually lets a bailee sell uncollected goods and pass good title to the buyer as against the customer. In the case this guide covers, it applies to goods in your possession or under your control as bailee where the customer is in breach of an obligation to take delivery of the goods. Your licence may itself create that obligation; otherwise the Act lets a bailee impose it by a Part I notice, given once the operator's obligation as custodian has ended or combined with the notice ending it (Schedule 1, paragraphs 1 and 4). That notice has its own contents (paragraph 1(3)) and can be combined with the notice of intention to sell if it is sent as paragraph 6(4) requires (paragraph 1(4)). Your licence terms still matter, because section 12 and Schedule 1 have effect subject to the terms of the bailment (section 12(8)).

At a store that a manager runs for an owner, we found no source on 17 October 2026 that says who the bailee is; see third-party self storage management.

What the notice must contain

Schedule 1 requires a written notice of intention to sell, complete in its contents — the figure below sets out each required particular.

The Act says the notice must be sent by registered post or the recorded-delivery service. Keep proof of posting and delivery. The Act names a registered letter and the recorded delivery service, so check with Royal Mail or the Post Office that the product you buy is one of those. Send it to the customer's last known address (for a company, its registered or principal office), and in practice include the customer's own details, an inventory, and clear instructions for paying the arrears or collecting the goods. A defective notice, or one sent to the wrong address, can leave you without the Act's entitlement to sell.

The three-month rule

Where money was already owed before the notice was given — which is the ordinary storage-arrears case — Schedule 1, paragraph 6(3) requires the notice period to be not less than three months, and paragraph 6(2) requires the period to give the customer a reasonable opportunity of taking delivery of the goods. The earliest lawful sale date is therefore at least three calendar months after the notice is given (under section 7 of the Interpretation Act 1978, a posted notice is treated as given when it would be delivered in the ordinary course of post, unless the contrary is proved), and treating that as a hard block with no override is a sensible discipline.

Two more points in the Act matter here. The Act bars you from serving a notice, or selling under one, while you have notice that the customer is questioning or refusing to pay because of a dispute concerning the goods. And for contested or high-value cases, section 13 lets you ask the court to authorise a sale — slower, but it settles the question of lawfulness before the goods are gone rather than after.

Selling, accounting and the surplus

When the period has genuinely run and the debt is still unpaid, you may sell — but not carelessly. The Act expects you to have adopted the best method of sale reasonably available in the circumstances, and it makes you accountable to the customer for the proceeds less the costs of sale. A properly run auction or trade sale with the evidence kept is more likely to meet that test; a mate's-rates job lot is an invitation to a claim.

From the proceeds you take what fell due before the notice was given, and the costs of the sale. Whatever remains is the customer's money, not yours. Hold the surplus, account for it, and pay it over: the Act makes the operator liable to account to the customer for the proceeds, less the costs of sale, even where the sale itself was valid. The Act also makes your entitlement to sell depend on your being reasonably satisfied that the customer owns the goods (section 12(3)). And remember the limit of what a sale achieves: it gives the buyer good title as against your customer — not against some third party who genuinely owned the goods all along.

Where operators go wrong — and what it costs

Sell without the entitlement the Act gives and you may commit conversion, which is wrongful interference with someone else's goods, and your liability is normally measured by the value of the goods, not the size of the debt. As an illustration, not a statistic: a unit carrying £600 of arrears might hold £15,000 of possessions, and a botched sale would turn a small collections problem into a five-figure claim, plus the argument, plus the reputational damage.

The ways a sale goes wrong follow from what the Act requires: selling before the three months have truly elapsed; a notice missing a required element; service to an out-of-date address when a newer one was sitting in an email thread; disposing of "worthless" goods informally with no notice at all; and absorbing the surplus. A checklist and patience make each of these easier to avoid, which is why this guide treats the process as a rigid one rather than a judgement call.

When the process must stop

Some events should stop the standard path, however far along you are:

• The customer has died. Their goods now concern the estate and its personal representatives. Pause everything, make contact with the family or representatives where possible, and take legal advice before any further step.
• The customer is insolvent: for example bankrupt, in an individual voluntary arrangement or a debt relief order, or a company in administration or liquidation. An insolvency practitioner's rights intervene, and continuing the ordinary notice-and-sale route may be neither available nor safe.
• The customer is in a breathing space. In England and Wales, an individual in the Debt Respite Scheme is protected from creditor action for up to 60 days (longer in a mental health crisis). Once you are told, stop all action on the debt: the regulations bar enforcement, including selling the goods, without a court's permission (with limited exceptions), and treat action taken in breach as void. Take legal advice before any further step.
• The customer is disputing the debt. As above, the Act bars the notice, and any sale under it, while you have notice that the customer is questioning or refusing to pay because of a dispute concerning the goods. Resolve it, or go via the court.

Treat these as holds that suspend the machine, not complications to work around. The cost of pausing is time; the cost of selling a deceased customer's goods on autopilot is not something you want to price.

The paper trail is the protection

If the process is ever challenged — by the customer, an estate, or an insolvency practitioner — you may be defending it years later, on the strength of your records. The file for each case should hold: the arrears history, every reminder with dates and addresses, the overlock confirmation, the served notice with proof of delivery, the earliest-sale-date calculation, the inventory, the sale evidence, and the proceeds-and-surplus ledger. Keep it for at least six years after the sale: a claim in tort can generally be brought up to six years after it arose (Limitation Act 1980, section 2), so the surplus obligation and any dispute can outlive the unit's next move-in.

This is also where software earns its keep. StoreBay supports the early rungs of this ladder: automated dunning and collections, a notice telling your staff which unit to padlock and a place for them to confirm it is on, and an append-only record of each step. The sale step is built to block a sale in the application and again in the database, so a sale cannot be recorded before the date calculated from the served date entered. The screen that runs it is switched off in the current release, so keep your own record of the notice, the sale and the surplus. Whatever system you use, the standard to hold it to is the same: every stage evidenced, and the too-early sale impossible to record rather than merely discouraged.

Getting the arrears ladder right earlier is what keeps accounts out of this process — see dunning for the collection side.

Three related mechanics sit either side of this process and are worth understanding before you need them: overlocking is the access restriction that normally precedes any sale; the storage lien is the contractual right to hold the goods while sums are owed; and the storage licence agreement is where that right and any power of sale are written down.

None of this is a reason to fear the process. Followed properly, the 1977 Act gives operators in England and Wales a statutory route to selling uncollected goods: a notice, a notice period of at least three months where money was already owed, an entitlement to sell as against the customer, and an account of the proceeds. It does not remove every risk, so follow each step, keep your records, and take legal advice where the facts are unusual.