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hello welcome back to tenant law basics this is a series of short videos looking at landlord and tenant law in England and Wales in the United Kingdom I'm Chester Jefferson and today we will be looking at lodgers and lodger agreements so we've mentioned lodgers briefly in previous videos where I said that a lodger arrangement is where you have a residential licensed McNew rather than a tenancy now Ashleigh and point of fact that's not totally correct it is possible to have a tenancy in a lodger situation but it's not normal the normal situation is somebody has a spare room in their house they rent this room out to a larger the larger lived in the room they use other rooms in the house in common with the family perhaps they share the sitting room they use the bathroom in the kitchen and then the landlord will provide services for the larger that normally it's just sheets changing the sheets giving clean towels so that will be a residential license and the the occupant will be a lodger now the lodger arrangement will last so long as the landlord is living in the same accommodation because the essence of a lodger arrangement is that the landlord shares living accommodation with the lodger so what happens if the landlord moves out now if the landlord is away from the premises temporarily say for example they've gone for a long holiday or they've gone to look after their aren't very he's not very well in Scotland it will continue to be a larger arrangement because that place will still be the landlord's main home however if the landlord moves out permanently at that stage then the lodgers will acquire a tenancy because the landlord is no longer living in the property with them so they will automatically acquire a tenancy at that point almost certainly it's going to be in a short short old tenancy and if the landlord knows that that's going to happen should regularize that to give people tenancy agreements at that time but while the larger arrangement is ongoing what are the characteristics of it and how is a larger arrangement different from a tenancy first of all even if it is a tenancy it's not going to be in a short short term tenancy so I just say that to start with because very occasionally Lord your Arrangements they can have a tenancy as I said it's rare normally it's a residential license now the first thing to say is that if the landlord takes a deposit which is not unknown that deposit does not have to be protected in a scheme because the tenancy deposit legislation provides that the the rules only apply to a short short of tenancy so as a lodger as a residential license or even if they have a tenancy it's not going to be in a short short old tenancy so it does not need to be protected in a scheme if it is a residential license then the landlord's repairing obligations in Section 11 of the 1985 Landlord and Tenant Act will not apply the other very big difference is that the landlord will not have to get a court order if they want to evict the lodger now the reason for this is down to protection from eviction at 1977 now the protection from eviction at 1977 is the Act which says that if a landlord wants to evict a residential occupy it doesn't matter whether it is a tenancy or whether it's a residential license the landlord must do this by getting a court order for possession and then if the occupier still fails to move out then they need to physically evict them by using either the court bailiffs or a high court enforcement officer or sheriffs that is the normal normal bra for all tenancies and for all residential licenses but in section 3a of the Act it sets out a number of exceptions and one of those exceptions is where the landlord living accommodation with the lodger and the living accommodation has to be proper living accommodation just sharing a staircase or cupboard is what won't count it has to be something like a kitchen bathroom sitting room in those circumstances the land will did not need to get an order for possessions so that is a significant difference now there are a few things that are the same though so for example if you are a larger landlord you will still need to do right to rent checks on your lodgers because these are arm checks that landlords have to do to make sure that the person that they are thinking of renting the room property to has a right to rent in the United Kingdom now I'm not going to go into any details about this if you want to find out more you need to go to the guard dot uk' site and do a search on right to rent in or find copious information now have guidance documents and all the rest of it then larger landlords will also need to contain a gas safety certificate they will need to either provide a copy of this to the lodger or have it available so that they can see it perhaps put it up on a notice board in the kitchen and this needs to be done every year in the same way that land water tenancies need to do and then another thing which larger landlords may not think about is that the Housing Multiple Occupation regulations the HMO regulations will also apply to them now again I'm not going to go into this into a lot of detail but basically if there are more than two lodgers who are not family members then that will normally turn the property into a housing Multiple Occupation and if there are more than five people living in the property then it is highly likely that the lodger landlord will need to get an HMO license from their local authority so this is something that if you are thinking of renting out rooms in your house to a lodger you need to be aware of the final thing is that I'm going to talk about today is that the tenant fees act 2090 was quite a recent act at the time of recording this video will also apply because that applies not only to tenancies but it also applies to licenses so that will include lodger licenses and the tenant fees act says that the landlord can only charge such fees as are prescribed by the act now in larger situations you don't normally charge fees in the same way that landlords of tendencies or particular letting agents do but one thing that is important is that the tenant fees are also prescribes the amount of deposit that you can take and normally the amount of deposit that could be taken is limited to five weeks worth of rent now you can take up to six weeks if the annual rent is fifty thousand pounds or more now that it's very unlikely in a larger situation so you can't take more than five weeks rent as a deposit so um one other thing I need to say the law is gradually changing in wales housing is delegated to the Welsh Assembly in Wales and the Welsh Assembly are gradually passing more laws which means that there is starting to be quite a divergence between the law in England and the law in Wales two things I've mentioned here are different in Wales firstly landlords do not need to obtain right to rent checks in Wales and secondly the tenant fees Act does not at the time of recording this applying Wales and how I understand that the Welsh Assembly have their own legislation relating to tenant fees which will be coming into force probably in September 2019 now if you want to find out more about the rules relating to renting rooms accommodation to lodgers I do have a special website about this which is www.logicvoltage.com see you again in the next video