Licenses
There is a huge difference between a tenancy and a licence to occupy part of the landlord’s home. Where tenancies offer limited security, licences offer virtually none. Nevertheless, they can and do work
really well and continue to be tremendously popular. How you
occupy determines whether or not you’re a tenant or a licensee. No landlord who lives elsewhere (i.e. in a nice safe house up the hill) can offer a license and it be genuine. These arrangements exist for
resident landlords who live in the same building as their licensees.
Genuine licensees have living arrangements where their landlord has specified they need unrestricted access to every room in their property, for services like weekly cleaning and who live alongside their paying occupants.
Although not strictly in the remit of this guide, because situations overlap so much I shall give some general information on licensing/ lodging arrangements. This is an increasing rather than decreasing phenomenon. Many people with hefty mortgages take in someone to help with costs. In order to make this work, landlords can’t be expected to have someone whose lifestyle is inconvenient claiming security of tenure for months on end – it’s just too invasive. Most licences can legitimately be closed down by landlords within a week.
There’s rarely anything much by way of paperwork with these arrangements, but they work. Lodgers or licensees live in happy coincidence with landlords up and down the country. Many live there during the week and return to family homes at weekends. Many share meals with families. It can be an extraordinarily expedient way to live for lots of people. What it doesn’t offer is much security.
Could My Licence Actually Be A Lease?
Possibly. Many people bought up large properties when prices were cheap and still offer them out for rent. They don’t live on the premises – many only visit to collect rent. Facilities like kitchens or bathrooms are shared. Yet they continue to insist to tenants that they are offering licenses with no security.
Anyone asked to leave arrangements like this at short notice should quibble. You are probably a tenant – with the security that offers – whatever your landlord insists. Calling by each week to collect rent and to throw a few eggs and bread in the fridge doesn’t cut it. Licences are actually quite hard to create and it takes more than the ingredients for eggs on toast to remove someone’s genuine security.
If the landlord doesn’t live in the same building (and I don’t mean a separate flat downstairs either) what matters in law is what is happening on the ground. By paying anyone money for accommodation you are creating either a licence or a tenancy. Indeed, if a document claims one arrangement, but how you
live contradicts that paperwork, then court decisions will be based on how you live, not what a piece of paper pretends to have offered. Even when no paper changes hands, again the oral tenancy may apply.