Regulated tenancies were common prior to January 15, 1989, and provided long-term tenancy with private landlords. Regulated under the Rent Act 1977, tenants are entitled to a fair rent set by Valuation Office Agency rent officers. This is reviewed every two years.
Tenants may have a regulated tenancy if they had one and later signed a new tenancy agreement with the same landlord, even if it’s at a different address. Like ASTs and assured tenancies, tenants must have full control of the property and not live with the landlord. They are sometimes called protected tenancies or Rent Act tenancies.
Regulated tenancies provide strong protection against eviction, as landlords cannot use a Section 21 notice. Tenants can only be evicted if the landlord gets a court order, and be able to prove a legal reason for eviction, such as rent arrears, anti-social behaviour or another breach of the tenancy agreement.
A regulated tenancy can be passed on, or inherited by a member of the family or a partner who is living at the property when the tenant dies.
Subletting and lodgings
All of the examples covered so far are tenancies where the tenant is in sole control of the property – it is their home and theirs alone.
Now we’ll look at other types of tenancy, where this is not the case, and tenants either share the property with the landlord or another tenant.