Renting A Home

For the first year as a tenant with us, you will receive a starter tenancy. This is also known as an assured short-hold tenancy. This type of tenancy will only last for 12 months before we change your tenancy type and is used to make sure you get the best start in sustaining your tenancy.

A starter tenancy also allows time for you to familiarise yourself with your responsibilities, such as paying your rent on time and allowing access for repairs, home visits and safety checks. This type of tenancy gives us stronger powers to deal with any breaches of the tenancy agreement and if necessary, end your tenancy.

What are my rights?

As a starter tenant, you have several important rights, which are all outlined in your tenancy agreement. For example, you have the right to have repairs carried out in your home and the right to make a complaint. However, during the period of the starter tenancy, there are some rights that you do not have, including the following:

• Transferring to a different property
• Mutually exchanging your home with another tenant
• Assigning your tenancy to someone else (unless a court has ordered it)
• Taking in any additional household members
• Buying your property (subject to eligibility requirements)
• Making alterations and improvements

Why would you end my Starter Tenancy?

We recognise this is a serious intervention, and it is used in instances of serious breaches of the terms of your tenancy agreement.

Some examples of serious breaches include, but are not limited to, the following:

• You, your visitors and/or members of your household committing anti-social behaviour, which could include things such as violence and/or threats of violence towards others, harassment of others, domestic abuse, hate crime or incidents, criminal activity such as dealing or cultivating drugs within the vicinity of your home
• You, your visitors and/or members of your household causing or allowing the property to be damaged
• Not maintaining rent payments on a regular basis

We may also end a Starter Tenancy if we believe it has been attained by “deception”. This means you have said something in your application which is untrue, or you failed to mention something which you were asked about. An example of this would be failing to declare a criminal conviction which was not “spent” under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 or failing to declare a previous history of anti-social behaviour or rent arrears.

We can terminate a Starter Tenancy if there is a repeated pattern of minor breaches of your tenancy agreement that, individually, would not warrant ending your tenancy but together, in our opinion, are serious enough to do so.

Monitoring

We will monitor your tenancy during the probationary period. If we believe that you are not following the terms of your tenancy agreement, we will inform you of our concerns and what actions you need to take to resolve any issues. If the problems continue, we may issue a notice to end your tenancy.

Conversion

This means changing your tenancy type. We will review your starter tenancy before it ends and, in most cases, contact you to discuss conversion. If there are no problems and there has been no other change of circumstances, we will usually offer a conversion to a full Assured Tenancy.

An Assured Tenancy is the most common tenancy we offer. Under normal circumstances, an Assured Tenancy allows you to live in your home for the rest of your life, as long as you follow the terms of the Tenancy Agreement.

These are older tenancies which transferred from Sedgefield Borough Council. We do not issue any new Secure Tenancies.

Since 2001, rents for properties let at 'social rent' (approximately 79% of our homes) have been determined using a formula set by the government. This formula calculates a specific rent amount for each property based on the property's value, local income levels, and its size. Social rent does not include service charges.

In 2011, the government introduced a new type of rent called 'affordable rent'. This allows rents to be set at up to 80% of the market rent, including service charges. These 'affordable rents' are then subject to the same annual rent increases as 'social rent' homes. Affordable rent mainly applies to new build homes, but each scheme has its own rules. The government implemented Affordable Rent to help social landlords build more homes, so that more people in need of housing can have access to a good quality home at an affordable rent.

Intermediate rent is designed for working households and can provide a solution for households struggling to meet open market rental costs, and those wishing to enter low cost home ownership in the future.

Rents are initially set at up to 80% of the market rent.