Keeping to your secure tenancy conditions

Your secure tenancy agreement| sets out your rights and responsibilities.

For example you must:

pay your rent on time
report repairs that are needed
allow access for repairs and other maintenance such as gas servicing
keep your home in good condition
keep your garden tidy
not cause a nuisance to your neighbours
not use your home for illegal or immoral purposes e.g. drug dealing
not dump rubbish
not cause or allow any other form of anti-social behaviour.

If you break any conditions of your tenancy, we will tell you about it. We will discuss the matter with you and ask you to change your behaviour and keep to your tenancy conditions.

If you still break your tenancy conditions, we will consider other remedies to change your behaviour. At first we will encourage you to keep to your tenancy conditions and will not take legal action.

Some of the remedies we may use are:

mediation
Acceptable Behaviour Contracts
Good Neighbour Agreements
referral to support agencies
referral to the Family Intervention Project.

Legal action

If the problem continues, we can take legal action against you, members of your household or your visitors. This could include:

Anti-social Behaviour Order (ASBO)
Anti-social Behaviour Injunction
demoting your tenancy (changing your tenancy to a 1 year probationary tenancy)
Parenting Order
Crack House Closure Order / Premises Closure Orders, and possession of your home.

Possession (eviction) action

If there is a very serious breach of your tenancy conditions or your behaviour doesn’t improve we will serve you with a Notice of Seeking Possession. This tells you we intend to seek possession of your home, normally after 28 days.

In some cases anti-social behaviour is so serious that 28 days notice may be unnecessary.

If you still don’t keep to your tenancy conditions or if there is very serious anti-social behaviour, we may apply to the court for possession of your home. The court can give us permission to evict a secure tenant using one or more of the grounds set out in the Housing Act 1985. There are full details of these grounds in your tenancy agreement. If the court agrees you will be evicted from your home.

In some circumstances we can ask for a possession order to be suspended or refuse any right to buy application. This is to give you a chance to comply with your tenancy conditions.

For more information about anti-social behaviour and legal action see our Managing Anti-social Behaviour web pages.|

Please ensure that you keep to your tenancy conditions at all times.

Evicting people from their home will always be a last resort and we will try to help you change your behaviour. However we will apply to the court for possession of your home if necessary.

Avoiding overcrowding

Your home has a ‘permitted number’ of people who can live in it. This depends on its size.

Allowing more than the permitted number of people to live in your home is an offence under the 1985 Housing Act and you could be prosecuted. Your home is also overcrowded under the Act if 2 or more people of opposite sexes over the age of 10 years (who are not living together as husband and wife) must sleep in the same room.

The number of people who should live in a home depends on the number of rooms, the size of the rooms and the ages of the people who live there.

We count living rooms and bedrooms but not the kitchen or bathroom.

For the room and space calculations:

children under 1 year old are ignored
children over 1 and under 10 years old count as a half
rooms under 50 square feet (15.24 square metres) are ignored.

Generally:

1 room means 2 people can live there
2 rooms = 3 people can live there
3 rooms = 5 people can live there
4 rooms = 7.5 people can live there
5 rooms or more = 2 people per room can live there.

However, the size of a room also determines how many people can sleep there:

floor area 50-69 square feet (15.24 - 21 square metres) = 0.5 people can sleep there
floor area 70-89 square feet (21.33 – 27.12 square metres) = 1 person can sleep there
floor area 90-109 square feet (27.43 – 33.22 square metres) = 1.5 people can sleep there
floor area 110 square feet (33.53 square metres) = 2 people can sleep there.

There are special rules for people in exceptional circumstances.

For more information please contact us|.