The Tenancy Agreement

Many tenants have a written tenancy agreement, but a legal contract exists between a landlord and a tenant whether or not anything is written down. A verbal agreement may simply be based on the conversation the landlord and tenant had when they originally agreed on the terms of the letting. A verbal contract may, however, be difficult to enforce, especially if there were no witnesses to the agreement.

What documents and information must the tenant receive

By law, the following documents or information must be given to a tenant:-

·  If there is a weekly tenancy (not a fixed term or monthly tenure), the landlord must provide a rent book or similar document. The landlord commits a criminal offence if s/he fails to do so

·  The landlord must provide her/his address

·  In England and Wales if the tenancy is an assured shorthold which was created on or after 28 February 1997, the landlord must provide basic written terms of the agreement within 28 days of the tenant requesting this in writing

Implied Terms of tenancy Agreements

There are obligations a landlord and tenant have which may not be set down in the agreement but which are given by law and are implied into all tenancy agreements. These terms form part of the contract, even though they have not been specifically agreed between the landlord and tenant.

Some of the most common implied terms are:-

·  The landlord must carry out basic repairs

·  The landlord must keep the installations for the supply of water, gas, electricity, sanitation, space heating and heating water in good working order

·  The tenant's right to live peacefully in the accommodation without nuisance from the landlord

·  The tenant's obligation to take proper care of the accommodation.

Rights given by law will vary according to the type of tenancy.

The rights laid down by law always override those which are stated in a written or oral agreement. An agreement which suggests that the tenant or the landlord has less rights than those given by common law or statute is a sham tenancy agreement.

What an agreement states and what the tenancy actually is may be different. For example, landlords may claim that an assured tenancy is in fact an assured shorthold tenancy (short assured tenancy in Scotland), or that the agreement is not a tenancy agreement but a 'licence to occupy'.

In England and Wales, but not in Scotland, a tenant may also have signed an agreement stating that the property was granted under a licence to occupy. This is not enough to make the agreement a licence.