Note that housing law in Wales has changed with effect from 1 December 2022. Find out more on our New Wales PageNote that all or some the law discussed here is due to change when the Renters Rights Act comes into force. The date for this is currently unknown. This note will be amended when we know more. See also our Renters Rights Act Information page.
Tessa’s Ten Top Tips on Occupation Types (England)
- If a landlord rents a room in his own home and shares living accommodation with the occupier, the occupier has fewer legal rights. The occupier here is normally known as a lodger.
- Apart from resident landlord situations, in most cases where someone moves into a property and starts paying rent, they will automatically acquire an assured shorthold tenancy. After the commencement of the Renters Rights Act 2025 this will change to be an assured periodic tenancy.
- Putting ‘residential license’ at the top of the agreement signed by a prospective occupier and including clauses saying that the occupier has a license and not a tenancy will not of itself mean that the occupier will have a license and not a tenancy
- If you give someone a ‘license agreement’ when they actually have a tenancy, this is known as a ‘sham license’ and is a criminal offence.
- You can create a residential license if you provide cleaning and similar services where the landlord or his staff enter the property or room regularly as of right. However if these services cease for a significant period of time, the occupation will normally convert to a tenancy.
- The rule that said that you had to give a fixed term of six months or more as a condition of creating an assured shorthold tenancy ended in 1997. This is going to change again when the Renters Rights Bill comes into force as all ASTs will be converted to periodic assured tenancies. Any attempt to create a fixed term will be of no effect and landlords who try will be vulnerable to a find of up to £7,000.
- A tenancy is a form of legal interest in land. While the tenancy exists the tenant has the right to exclude everyone from the property (apart from special cases such as police with search warrants) – even the landlord.
- Do not assume that ALL tenancies are assured shortholds (or, after the commencement of the Renters Rights Act, assured tenancies). Tenancies where the landlord is a resident landlord, the tenant is a limited company or the rent is over £100,000 are all examples of tenancies which will be ‘common law’ or ‘unregulated’ tenancies.
- Tenants who remain living in a property after the end of the fixed term where no new tenancy agreement has been signed, will not be ‘squatters’. They will normally acquire a ‘periodic tenancy’ and are entitled to remain living there until evicted under a Court Order.
- Tenants do not acquire special rights simply because they have been living in the property for a long time. Some long-term tenants do have extra rights but this is normally because the law which applied at the time the tenancy was created was different.
Find out more:
- See our content on occupation types on Landlord Law
- Follow our FREE Tenancy Trail – to find out what tenancy type you have
- For information on Lodgers see the Lodger Landlord website
- See information about the Landlord Law Tenancy Agreements
- If you are considering entering into a rent to rent agreement watch this first.
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