Your tenancy

It’s a two-way Contract

Tamil Housing will always do its best to provide you with a home that you and your family are proud of living in. We also expect you to meet your responsibilities as a tenant.

When you sign your tenancy agreement you are making a legally binding agreement with us. You must keep to the terms and accept the responsibilities of the agreement, it’s a two way contract.

We work with partner housing associations and other agencies such as the police and local authorities. We also manage homes on behalf of community landlords.

This means we work with partners on tenancy, estate and repair issues to meet our responsibilities and to deal with any housing issues and we share information where this is necessary.

We offer the following types of tenancies:

Assured tenancy

This is a periodic tenancy granted to tenants on or after the 15 January 1989. As long as you keep to the terms of the tenancy agreement, Tamil Housing will take no action to end the tenancy agreement.

Assured short-hold tenancy

These tenancies are time limited and have less security of tenure than Assured Tenancies.We will only issue these in limited circumstances, particularly, in circumstances where we manage short life properties on behalf of other landlords.

Starter tenancies

Starter tenancies have a probationary period for one year and during this time you will be an Assured Short-hold tenant. This means Tamil Housing and / or its partner organisation may decide to end your tenancy where any terms of the tenancy agreement have been breached by you, your household or any of your visitors (e.g. causing Anti-Social Behaviour). Your tenancy will normally change to an Assured Tenancy after 12 months if there are no concerns, although we can extend the probationary period if there have been problems with the tenancy.

Five-year, fixed-term tenancy

From April 2012, Tamil Housing Associations have issued 5 year fixed term tenancies. This means that at the end of the fixed term period your tenancy can be ended. Some of the factors that will determine whether the tenancy continues or will be ended are (the below is not an exhaustive list of criteria):

• Your overall circumstances and that of your household
• How well the tenancy has been conducted
• Have there been any breaches of the tenancy agreement
• Have your income levels exceeded the limit for social housing
• Where our allocation and lettings priorities have changed to determine who we should house to make the best of our resources

We are currently reviewing our approach to Fixed Term tenancies.

Signing your tenancy:

At the time of signing your tenancy we will provide you with the following documentation:

• Tenancy agreement
• Tenancy handbook/Other relevant information
• Summary information about your home
• Information pack about maintaining your home where you are moving into a newly built flat or house

Ending your tenancy

You can end your tenancy with us at any time, provided you give us a minimum of four weeks written notice. If you want to do this, please ask for our tenancy termination and/or tenancy surrender form.

Mutual Exchange – moving home

We understand that personal circumstances of residents change with time, perhaps requiring a larger or smaller home to meet your families’ needs. You can exchange your home with a Tamil Housing or another housing association or a Council tenant via HomeSwapper which we are members of. We encourage our residents who are looking to move home to register with HomeSwapper. This is a national home swap and house exchange service for social housing residents. You can register and find out more information about an exchange with HomeSwapper  by visiting www.homesswapper.co.uk . Tamil Housing will normally agree to a mutual exchange so long as you meet our exchange criteria. The criteria for exchange includes the rent account, for both the incoming and outgoing tenant, being clear (with no substantial rent arrears).