Update on Tenancy Agreements in Wales

As our Welsh members will no doubt be aware we now have separate tenancy agreements for properties in England and Wales.

Student Agreements

First – apologies for the delay in loading up the Welsh student agreements.  After having been prodded by a member on this they are now online.

Text amends

Following feedback from one of our Welsh members (thanks Bill!) we have now done some amendments to the text of all four Welsh tenancy agreements.

Bill reported that Rent Smart Wales, although happy with the majority of the agreement, wanted us to amend the wording in clauses relating to claiming costs to remove the word ‘reasonable’.

This is because the word ‘reasonable’ is too open to interpretation.  What one person thinks is reasonable another might consider expensive and so they want the guidance to be tied down more.

In view of this I have amended the Welsh fees schedules to include at the end an hourly rate (which you  need to add) to be used when calculating costs.  Make sure this rate is not too high – you may need to justify it at adjudication.  

The following clauses have also been amended to remove reference to the word ‘reasonable’ in the context of the fee charged (although the word remains for other contexts).

• 1.10
• 2.3.3
• 3.13
• 7.7
• 7.9

Hopefully that will keep them happy.

English tenancy agreements

I did wonder whether to amend the English agreements similarly but have not done this so far.  If members would like me to do so I will.

Perhaps you could let me have your feedback, either via email or in the forum.