UK Landlord Forum / Life

I understand a new government How To Rent guide was released this week.

'The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) have published an updated How to Rent Guide. 

Landlords granting a new assured shorthold tenancy (AST) of property in England on or after the 10 December 2020 are required to provide the up-to-date version of the MHCLG "How to Rent: the checklist for renting in England" to the tenant before or as soon as possible after the grant of the AST.

Failure to provide a new tenant with the current version of the MHCLG How to Rent Guide can lead to the landlord being unable to serve a valid Section 21 Notice to terminate the tenancy at a later stage.

You may need to check the wording of your tenancy as the current version of the guide should also be provided on the renewal of an AST where this is a statutory periodic tenancy. 

ASTs are contractual periodic tenancies which are written as continuations of the fixed term and therefore the landlord does not need to issue a new How to Rent Guide on renewal.  However, if an AST is silent as to how the tenancy will continue after the end of the fixed term this will be a statutory periodic tenancy which makes it a new tenancy and the landlord should issue a new How to Rent Guide to the tenant on renewal. 


Can anyone explain what the bit in bold means? 

If you have a fixed term assured shorthold tenancy, when it ends, and the tenant remains, the law say a periodic tenancy automatically arises. This periodic tenancy is commonly known as statutory periodic tenancy (SPT), as it is a periodic tenancy that arose by statute. A SPT is a new tenancy, so the requirement to provide the How to Rent booklet applies again. There's an exception if the landlord had already previously given the lastest version of the booklet, but with a new version released, that obviously cannot be the case.

Where the term of the tenancy is expressed as an initial (fixed) term which continues monthy by month (or some other repeating periods), that is known as a contractual periodic tenancy. It is a single tenancy despite having an initial period that's a lot longer than the subsequent repeating period. As a continuation of an existing tenancy, the requirement to provide the booklet does not arise again.