I haven’t been writing much in the blog recently because I have been doing a lot of other stuff. One the main things I have been concentrating on recently is a new draft of my standard tenancy agreement. I was going to give it an overhaul anyway, then I got involved with a client who wanted one of my agreements to be checked for a crystal mark, and I decided to use this experience to amend and adapt my own agreements to a plain English format.
Plain English agreements now need to be in the first person, so the landlord is ‘we’ and the tenant ‘you’. I found this very strange to start with but now I have got used to it and have come to accept it. It does make for a more approachable document.
I have used this as an opportunity to check and re-do every clause. It has taken ages. I think I have it sorted and then I look at it afresh and find more things I want to change. I think that the new agreement is definitely much better though.
I have also radically altered the design of the agreement. My old agreement was crushed into a small space with fairly small type and close columns. However I have been reading a bit about design (having bought myself The Non-Designer’s Design Book
I have now taken the perhaps rash step of putting a draft online for my annual members to have a look at and comment on before I use it to replace all my other agreements. I have often had very good ideas and suggestions from members about the tenancy agreements, many of the current adaptations came from members suggestions.
Next I think a design overhaul of the rest of the forms …