Unlock eSignature Lawfulness for Lodger Agreement in United Kingdom

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okay well one of the problems that we have with tenancy agreements is they are inherently misleading and there's a number of reasons why they're misleading one of these is that many laws apply whether they're in the tenancy agreement or not and on one classic example of this is the statutory repairing covenants that set out in Section 11 of the 1985 Landlord and Tenant Act which Simon's going to be taking you through later on this morning now there wouldn't be a lot of point in having these regulations if landlords could exclude them by having a clause in their tenancy agreement and and they are intended to apply to walk short tennessee's under seven years so if there is a tenancy agreement and they don't mention the riparian covenant that is inherently confusing because the tenant isn't aware that they have these rights one of the one of the good practice with drafting is to have at least a mention of the regulations that apply to tenancy agreements so when people are reading them they know that they're there from the consumer guide aspect so the statuary repairing covenants are are one if you if you even employed Lea exclude them in any of your laws is that that will be that will be invalid and then of course there's the the gas regulations and the tenancy deposit regulations these only apply to assured shorthold tenancies but but they will apply as we all know to all the short short old tendencies whether it's written in the tenancy agreement or not so you need to have those there then there is the classic confusingly titled covenant for quiet enjoyment which is they don't have to be quiet and it's not lesser so for them to enjoy themselves so it's sort of misleadingly named in a way this this is a very important right that all tenants have it's the right to enjoy the property in the old-fashioned sense which means to live there without interference from the landlord and it's sort of one of the rights of being the owner of the property for the slice of time that you are a tenant so this is implied into alternate si agreements whether it's written down or not and then we've got these confusing common law rules these rules that have been built up over over hundreds of years about how we do certain things and these apply whether they're written in the tenancy agreement or not for example regarding service of notices to quit now in assured and assured shorthold tenancies the landlord can't serve a notice to quit because this is specifically excluded by section 5 of the Housing Act 1988 but tenants can serve a notice to quit and the notice to quit is the document that you serve during a periodic tenancy which ends the Ternan sake and there are common law rules about its service and and the length of the notice period which is basically for one period of time if you've got a monthly periodic tenancy they need to give at least one month and it needs to end at the end of the period and I've had tenants come to me sometimes so how do I know this it's not written in the tenancy agreement anywhere I need to know you know what my notice period is and again probably good practice to say in the tenancy agreement somewhere what the notice period is but it needs to comply with the common law rules otherwise that Clause will be invalid because it'll be taking away the right tenant has you see how confusing it is so those are some legal things which will apply whether that whether they they're written in the tenancy agreement or not you also may have a number of clauses in the tenancy agreement which are actually unenforceable I've already mentioned any agreement to exclude the repairing covenants or clauses which take away tenants rights under the statutory repairing covers actually there is a way to exclude the repairing conference you can get an order from the court get a county court order I've never heard of anybody doing that but unless you've done that they will apply and then there's unfair clauses will be invalid I can talk about those in a minute and then there will be some clauses which are in that but may not be applicable to the type of tenancy that you have and one of the confusing things about tenancies is that a tenancy type can change during the tenancy and we had a classic example of that in 2010 because the Hyatt that the rent limit the high rent limit for short short hold tenancies changed in December 2010 from 25 thousand pounds to one hundred thousand pounds so before a certain day I can't remember what date it was in December a tenancy perhaps with her with a rent of thirty five thousand pounds per annum would have been an unregulated tenancy agreement after that date it would have switched because the law change it would have become an assured shorthold tenancy agreement they would normally if so had the same tenancy throughout so some clauses that might have been in there before that date which were perhaps relevant to an unregulated tenancy clauses relating to forfeiture and service of notices to quit after that date the relevant clauses would be relating to section 21 now we do often leave clauses relating to unregulated tenant sit-in assured shorthold tenancies because there are times when when a tenancy may change its type so it's appropriate to have them both but that is that is confusing as well and then there's quite a few words in tenancy agreements which we lawyers like to use but which are confusing for the ordinary people like joint and several liability and the word reentry the classic forfeiture Clause says that if the tenant is in arrears for 21 days the land will may reenter now several hundred years ago the landlord did actually have the right to physically go in but that was taken away under the protection from eviction act certainly so now a landlord will re-enter by bringing proceedings for possession and can't actually physically so the word reenter has a different meaning which which is which is a bit confusing so in your forfeiture clauses you always need to say that it doesn't take away the landlords the tenants rights under the protection from eviction act and that that the tenants rights remain