Landlord Law Services

Legal help, services and support for private residential landlords

 

Which Tenancy Agreement?

Preliminary Information

The law changed in Wales on 1 December 2022 when the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 came into force.  Many of the amendments to the law concerned tenancy agreements – or ‘occupation contracts’ as they are now called in Wales.

Be aware that tenancies and residential licenses are now largely treated the same (apart from a few occupation types such as lodger agreements – see later), which is why we now have new terminology as follows:

Welsh v. English terminology

  • Occupation contract: tenancy or license
  • Written statement (of occupation contract); Tenancy or license agreement
  • Dwelling (sometimes referred to as ‘home’): the property being let
  • Contract holder: tenant or licensee
  • Occupation date: the date the contract starts
  • Term: clause or section in the written statement
  • Converted contract – a contract which existed prior to 1 December 2022 as a tenancy or license
  • Substitute contract – where a new contract has been signed for a converted contract.

Landlord Law members can see more definitions in our terminology FAQ.

Conversion Contracts

If your contract existed as a tenancy or residential license before 1 December 2022 (and has not ended), note that the tenancy/license will have converted to the new rules on that date.

All landlords were required to serve a ‘conversion contract’ on their contract holders before 1 June 2023.  If you failed to do this, you are now in breach (and could be subject to penalties – one of which is an inability to use the no-fault procedures until the conversion contract has been served).

There can be no standard conversion contract template as the document you need to serve is an amalgam of the Welsh model contract clauses and your own tenancy agreement clauses before 1/12/2023.  So landlords had to create their own – not an easy task.

If you have not served your conversion contract, note that we have a conversions contract page where we give guidance and the draft wording to help you.  Landlord Law members will find it here.

Please now click next to start the Which Tenancy Agreement Trail for Wales.

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