UK Landlord Forum / Life

I am a little confused over 'right to rent' in relation to people who start living at a property after the rental period has commenced.

For example I am about to let a 2 bed property to a single guy, who may well end up living there with his (hypothetical) girlfriend.  If his girlfriend has children already they may start living there too

My agreement states that no more than 4 people can live at the property, but I will only have a single tenant.  I can check his eligibility to rent in this country before we sign, but I cannot (easily) check the eligibility of others who live with him after the rental has commenced.

1) Is it reasonable to ask the tenant to inform a LL if anyone else starts living at a property (sounds a bit intrusive to me)?

2) Are LL obliged to do RTR checks on adults who join the household during a rental period?

3) Should such adults be made to sign as tenants ?

Thanks guys!

Be wary of a advice from a forum especially my own
Always do your own research.

Furthermore, in this particular case I suggest even more caution than usual. 
As a lawyer that I work with regularly reminds me, until any legislation has been tested in court then no one really knows how it applies.  The question you have raised has not, as far as I know, been so tested.

To answer you question you must look to the Immigration Act 2014, specifically clause 22, a couple of excerpts I shall set out below...

1)A landlord must not authorise an adult to occupy premises under a residential tenancy agreement if the adult is disqualified as a result of their immigration status.
(2)A landlord is to be taken to “authorise” an adult to occupy premises in the circumstances mentioned in subsection (1) if (and only if) there is a contravention of this section.
(3)There is a contravention of this section in either of the following cases.
(4)The first case is where a residential tenancy agreement is entered into that, at the time of entry, grants a right to occupy premises to—
(a)a tenant who is disqualified as a result of their immigration status,
(b)another adult named in the agreement who is disqualified as a result of their immigration status, or
(c)another adult not named in the agreement who is disqualified as a result of their immigration status (subject to subsection (6)).

(6)There is a contravention as a result of subsection (4)(c) only if—
(a)reasonable enquiries were not made of the tenant before entering into the agreement as to the relevant occupiers, or
(b)reasonable enquiries were so made and it was, or should have been, apparent from the enquiries that the adult in question was likely to be a relevant occupier.

So there you have it ....about as clear as mud and totally open to the interpretation of what is "reasonable"
This is why I say at the top of this post this will only become clearer over time.
But basically if you think hypo Girlfriend and Kids are living there and their right to rent may be compromised then you need to act reasonably....and do the checks (applies only to adults).

Note your insurance company might also be interested to know who was living there when the property burns down.  The last thing you need is the tenant extensions to say they lived at the property and you are trying to claim they were guests.

To your questions

1. Quite frankly I cannot fathom why folks think asking a tentant to tell the landlord who lives at the landlord's property could be intrusive.  This is a business transaction - remove emotion.

2. Yes see above

3. Ideally yes but that means you are 100% bound to do the right to rent checks. It may also change the type of tenant for insurance purposes.

Look at least do this:
Make sure your rental agreement makes it totally clear who is allowed to stay at the premises (names of adults)....you can permit children of those adults as well without naming.  You rental agreement is too obtuse according to what you have posted.
If you get suspicious then every quarterly check ask the tenant to confirm who is living there and record their answers in writing (they can sign).
Make sure subletting is not permitted (otherwise it gets hard to determine who is a guest and who is a sub tenant and whether the mesne landlord is to right to rent check them or the superior landlord etc).

Now go back and read the disclaimers at the start of this post.

Best of luck.

A.L.L. thanks so much for your time writing all this stuff out.  It's a big help.

The only problem I see going forward is that there is a grey area where people may be in the transition of moving in, and the tenant can always say they are just guests staying over for a few days.  Without camping outside with an SLR (the camera not the rifle ;-) ) it would be hard to know whether people are residents or visitors.

Thanks again.

Yes sadly that is what you will have bear with.
The best you can do is to modify your tenancy agreement and get the tenant to re-confirm regularly.
Hopefully that will qualify as "reasonable".

Whilst you do not have to evict a tenant but merely report them to the Secretary of State just to avoid doubt you still need a court order to evict a tenant.
But you cannot serve a section 8 (law not modified to include immigration act issue as a Ground for service) and possibly not a section 21 if not in the right time zone).

I hate to think what happens?....
Tenant is removed by the authorities..... (if not absconding asap) .....in either case leaving Mr Landlord with potential arrears and void period.
But then Landlords are blood sucking vermin scum living off the hard work of others, some of who even have to get up once a week to claim benefits -- so who cares if the Landlord gets screwed....bitter? moi? 

It is illegal to discriminate against potential tenants on the basis of race and nationality etc but I wonder if immigration act risk of flight is something else...?  Certainly I'd be looking for bigger deposit at the very least.

As an agent  in a reasonably OK part of SW London I really didn't think that I would run into many examples where prospective tenants failed the RTR checks but in the first month we had one couple who provided us with fake documents that were thankfully picked up by our reference company. There was no way that a layman would have picked them up but apparently the company has some clever bits of software that analyse the spacings between letters and flag up any problems.

Having had this brought to our attention, I wondered what I needed to do next so I called our solicitors who said I should report it on the helpline set up for just this purpose - what could be easier? Unfortunately the helpline is there to provide legal advice to landlords and agents and the person I spoke to told me we had no need to report it so what really was the point of doing the checks?

As with most government schemes to do with lettings it is half thought through and inadequately financed. I suspect you could take absolutely no notice of it for years and no one in the Home Office or the local authority would ever ask you about it as they are simply too busy.

It's a farce, years of government cuts have resulted in an inadequate number of officials able to check on the status of people coming into the country so they have now roped me in as an immigration officer. I already collect tax for the government from overseas landlords so I am really looking forward to drawing my civil service pension in a few years. 

An interesting real-world story... if a little disappointing.

Thanks for sharing David.
Good grief.... I had bought into the idea that some landlords in the midlands had been prosecuted so there was at least a system set up.
What a joke.
Anyway good to know.