New content on permitted occupiers / household members on Landlord Law

Following some questions and conversations on our Members Forum, I have been doing a bit of a review and drafting new content on the whole question of people living at a rented property who are not tenants.

So basically permitted occupiers.

Terminology

Thinking it through, I realised that we really had two situations and that there was some confusion about the terminology.

• A ‘household member’ is (so far as the Landlord Law tenancy agreements are concerned) someone who lives at the property with the tenant but who is not a tenant themselves.  For some time, we provided for the names of household members to be added our Landlord Law tenant agreements, mainly because it protects the landlord’s position regarding ‘right to rent’ checks.
• A lodger is someone who rents a room in someone’s home, and who is not normally a member of their landlord’s family.

Perhaps the main consideration with occupiers who are not tenants is ‘will this person turn the property into an HMO?’

The answer is

• If the occupier is a member of the tenants family (or ‘household as per the HMO regs‘) then in most cases, no, it won’t
• However, a lodger will not normally be a family member in which case they may well make the property an HMO.  This is why landlords need to be very careful about permitting lodgers.  We have an article about this here.

So lodgers are to be avoided, but allowing family to stay will normally be OK, so long as it does not make the property overcrowded.

New FAQ

I have now added the following new FAQ to the site to help landlords: 

What is the legal status of a ‘household member’ on the Landlord Law tenancy agreements?
What should landlords do if household members stay on after the tenants have left?
What is a lodger?
My tenant has asked permission for someone else to live at the property – should I permit this?

A new form

The discussion on the forum was partly about what should be done if you want to add a household member part way through a tenancy.

For example, if a tenant has a new partner and they want to live together or if an elderly tenant has a carer.

If you are minded to agree to this, we now have a new form you can use to add a new household member, which you will find on the additional tenancy forms page here.  Our lodger permission form can be found on the same page.

Along with some notes on the main points to consider in both situations.

Hopefully, members will find this new content useful should this situation arise.