Your Rights and Responsibilities

Joint

Tenancies

If two or more people sign your tenancy agreement, you are all individually responsible for paying the rent and meeting the other terms and conditions.

Paying your Rent

and Service Charge

on Time

You must pay your rent and service charge on time and in full.

We will usually give you at least four weeks’ notice in writing before changing your rent and service charges.

Taking Care of

your Home

We expect you to look after your home, carry out minor repairs and regularly decorate it. For a list of repairs that the tenant is responsible for and how to report a repair that is our responsibility, go to our Guidance on repairs and responsibilities.

The Right

to Repair

If you are a contractual tenant, you have the right to make certain urgent repairs if we fail to meet a set timescale. This is a complicated piece of law, so you would need to call the office first, to find out more.

Don't Run a Business without asking

us First

You must not run any kind of business from your home without getting our permission first. Be aware that depending on the nature of your business, it may affect your council tax and our buildings insurance.

Our Rules on Pets

Depending on the type of home you live in, we allow some tenants to Keep a pet – providing you get permission first.

If you live in a house, or a flat with a front door that opens directly to the outside, you may keep a pet, if you get our written permission first.

We will normally only allow a dog if you live on the ground floor and have sole access to a garden that is properly fenced and secure.

It’s your responsibility to make sure that your dog does not cause a nuisance to neighbours. If we give you permission, you must keep your pet under control and ensure that it doesn’t foul any shared areas in your building.

We will refuse permission to keep any dog covered by the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, or any other dog that appears to have been bred for fighting. We can take back our permission if we believe any animal is causing a nuisance or is a danger to other people.

Registered guide dogs for the blind, and hearing dogs for the deaf, are exempt from these rules.

Your Right to Improve your Home

If you are a contractual tenant, you have the right to carry out certain home improvements. However, you must get written permission first.

If you are an assured tenant and you would like to make improvements to your home, you must first ask our permission. You must not start work without it. This includes installing a satellite dish or cable TV.

We will not refuse our permission without giving you a good reason. But we will want to make sure that you get good quality work done that doesn’t interfere with your neighbours or damage the property. You must also get any official permission you need, for example from the local authority planning department.

We won’t allow you to fit security grilles to windows or doors because they are a health and safety risk.

If you go ahead with improvements without permission, we may require you to put things back the way they were, or bill you for carrying out the work ourselves.

Your Right to Swap your Home

If you are a contractual tenant, or a contractual shorthold tenant with a fixed-term agreement, you have the right to exchange homes with the tenant of any social housing landlord, providing you get written permission first.

If you’re one of our existing residents, the time may come when you would like to move. (See also, Homes for your grown-up children.)

Staying Away from Home

If you need to be away from your home for more than a month, you must contact us with full details. If you have a good reason – for example, you are going to the hospital, or making an extended visit to friends or family abroad – we can agree to this. However, you will need to show how you intend to pay your rent while you’re away.

Succession Rights

If a contractual tenant dies, their tenancy goes first to any remaining joint tenants.

In certain circumstances, their home can also pass to someone else. You can succeed in a tenancy, for example, if you were the tenant’s spouse, civil or live-in partner, providing you were living there when the tenant died.

However, there are no succession rights if the original tenant was a successor already.

This is because a tenancy can only be inherited once. Different rules also apply to homes that would end up under-occupied.

Assignment

You can’t sign over (‘assign’) your tenancy to someone else, unless:

it’s because you are making a mutual exchange
a court orders this as part of a divorce or separation settlement.

In all of these cases, you must contact us first, to get our written permission. We will not withhold this unreasonably.

Decent Behaviour

We expect you to live in your home peacefully and be a good neighbour. If you fail to do so, you are breaking your tenancy agreement and could lose your home. In the ‘Living in your home’ section of this website, you can find out more about how we handle:

nuisance and anti-social behaviour, and
domestic violence.