Agenda item

To inform the committee of the proposal to review and roll out a revised tenancy agreement to Waverley tenants.  The tenancy agreement is the contract between all tenants and the Council stating the roles and responsibilities of each party.  The need to review the tenancy agreement was identified as an action in the Housing Service Plan 2017/18.  A revised tenancy agreement will ensure the effective management of homes and tenancies.

Recommendation

It is recommended that the Committee:

1. supports the request to review the tenancy agreement;
2. will receive consultation feedback; and
3. identifies any areas for further scrutiny.

Rachel White, the Tenancy & Estates Manager, introduced the report that set out the scope and timetable for the review of the Tenancy Agreement. The Tenancy Agreement was the contract between each tenant and the Council, and it set out the roles and responsibilities of both tenant and landlord.

The aim of the review was to ensure that the Tenancy Agreement clearly supported policies and procedures that had been developed to enable the Council to manage individual tenancies but also meet its obligations to tenants collectively, and the wider community. The Tenancy Agreement needed to set out tenant responsibilities without ambiguity and support Officers in taking effective and timely action when addressing tenancy breaches.

The current Tenancy Agreement had been reviewed by a specialist housing barrister, and a number of amendments had been identified to improve clarity and reflect changes in the law. Further revisions would be added to reflect specific Waverley policies and procedures.

It was important that all the Council’s services had the opportunity to review the proposed changes and propose amendments where appropriate to reflect delivery of universal services. The Tenants’ Panel would also play a crucial role in the informal consultation on the development of new Tenancy Agreement, which would take place over the summer and early autumn. The final draft of the revised Tenancy Agreement would be presented to the Housing O&S Committee in November, before the start of the formal consultation with all tenants. The aim was to implement the new Tenancy Agreement with effect from 1 April 2018.

The Committee was supportive of the principle that the Tenancy Agreement should support the effective management of the Council’s housing stock, and the process set out to review the Agreement.

Whilst recognising that this was a legal contract, Members had some concerns that the document was not in Plain English, and Adrian Waller highlighted a couple of examples of less than transparent ‘legalese’ that were not new but could cause alarm. The Committee recommended that if the document itself could not be simplified, a Plain English version should be developed to sit alongside it. Members also noted some typos in the revisions put forward by the barrister and stressed that documents needed to be carefully proof-read before being published.

Cllr Seaborne noted that he had expected there to be a national standard for tenancy agreements, but had not been able to find one through an internet search. He asked whether officers would be consulting with other landlord councils to obtain examples of tenancy agreements. Rachel confirmed that there was no standard template agreement, although there would be sections that would be common to all social housing tenancy agreements. She did have some good examples of tenancy agreements that were better laid out and more accessible than Waverley’s and the intention was to use the best ideas in setting out Waverley’s new agreement.

The Committee endorsed the review of the Tenancy Agreement, and noted the timetable for the draft to come back to the Committee. The Committee recommended that a Plain English version of the Agreement – or some other form of explanatory text – be produced to ensure that tenants were absolutely clear what they were being consulted on, and eventually signing up to.