In Part 1 of this series, I explained my initial thinking behind a new Renters’ Rights Act compliant tenancy agreement for Landlord Law, my membership site.
But now I had to write it.
I started on the Thursday before Easter by copying the php document with all the HTML code on it over to a Google Doc.
I then took a day off on Good Friday and spent most of the day pottering around and watching programs on iPlayer.
Saturday (after walking the dog and breakfast), I set to it.
Removing things prohibited by the Renters’ Rights Act
This is essential. So out go all references to fixed terms, payment of rent in advance, and rent review clauses!
Along with references to section 21 and ground 1 notices!
The Key Information Section
This took quite a while.
The easy bit was adding a heading, ‘Key Information about this tenancy’.
I then went through the government’s new regulations item by item, making sure that there was something about every point in this section.
So all the parties and similar content were moved down (so the key information heading was the first thing after the front sheet) and expanded a bit.
I then had to identify where the rest of the content was in our terms and conditions, do a summary paragraph in the Key Information section, and refer down to it.
Most of the required information was already covered in my existing draft. It was just a matter of repurposing it.
Here are some of the things I had to deal with.
Periods of the tenancy
The new agreement is much clearer than my current agreement about tenancy periods. Tenants are given precise information about when they start and end.
I also allow landlords to add a short period at the start of the tenancy (provided for in section 1(8) of the Act) so the rent payment date can align with the first day of the period, if the tenancy starts on a different date.
Bills
I mentioned this in my first post in this series.
After some thought, I have decided to provide three alternatives for dealing with bills:
- Landlord pays the bills, and the cost is included in the rent (with a defined ‘bills allowance’),
- Landlord pays the bills and then invoices the tenants for the cost
- The tenants are responsible
The agreement also includes a ‘fair use’ policy which provides for landlords to be able to ask the tenant to pay any excess the landlord has to pay for rent-inclusive bills, over and above the bills allowance.
Hopefully, that will satisfy people. The relevant tenancy agreement section will provide for all three options, with lists of the bills to be paid by the landlord for the first two.
However, if the landlord wants the tenants to be responsible for all bills, they can just put N/A there.
The Deposit
My current agreement only deals with traditional deposits, but when I created the Welsh agreements in 2022, I included an option for information about an alternative scheme.
Feedback from many members is that they prefer a traditional scheme as there is less admin and the money is (unless challenged) available immediately if they need to make a claim.
However, there is no doubt that many people do use the alternative scheme, so I am glad that the new agreement will refer to them.
Equality Act reference
This is not included in my current tenancy, so I had to draft a new section.
I was surprised to see, though, that the regulations only required information about disabled tenants’ rights to request improvements. It did not mention assistance dogs.
Although I am pretty sure that there was a mention of assistance dogs during the debates in Parliament. I have included a reference to them anyway.
Checking it over
For this work, I must confess to quite extensive use of ChatGPT.
However, you have to be very careful with ChatGPT. You must remember at all times that it is a machine and does not think as we do. And that it sometimes misunderstands things.
For example, I have a notice in the tenancy agreement which tenants can sign if they are happy for landlords to use their keys and enter if the tenant is not there. To start with, ChatGPT completely misunderstood this clause and was recommending inappropriate amendments.
I then pointed out that the actual purpose of the notice was to allow landlords to use their keys.
There followed quite a long pause while it flashed up various ‘I am thinking’ messages. After which, it agreed that my clause was appropriate and just needed a bit of tweaking to the wording.
Tweaking and amending
During the checking process, ChatGPT suggested rather a lot of amended wording.
Some of it I accepted, and some I didn’t. However, it was very helpful to see the amended version, and often it was a much better reinstatement of what I had been trying to say.
I think I have largely got the measure of ChatGPT. Thanks perhaps to an Open University Computer Foundation course I did in 2012, which helps me understand how computers reason.
It’s rather like having an immensely knowledgeable but at the same time rather scatty assistant. But I am the boss.
Testing against consumer legislation
One thing ChatGPT was very useful for was checking the draft for compliance with
- The Renters Rights Act
- The Tenant Fees Act, and
- The consumer legislation
So I now feel reasonably confident that Landlord Law members using the agreement will be protected.
The drafting exercise took most of the Bank Holiday weekend, including Monday. Tuesday, I would start completing the Gravity Form.
Surely that wouldn’t take very long?
See the next part here. Or find links to all posts in this overview.
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