Short Assured Tenancies (SAT)

A Short Assured Tenancy is a special type of assured tenancy. It gives special rights to the landlord to repossess a house he has let, and special rights to the tenant to apply to a rent assessment committee for a rent determination.

A Short Assured Tenancy must be for at least 6 months. You may think that 01 January to 30 June is 6 months. Under the legislation, this could be deemed too short and it is safest to add a couple of days. Even 01 January to 01 July is considered by some to be potentially too short.

It may not seem a big issue, but if you don't get this right then you could end up with an Assured Tenancy and not a Short Assured Tenancy. An Assured Tenancy means the tenant has special rights of occupation and it is much harder to bring this to an end.

Prior Documents

Notice AT5

A landlord must give a notice (Notice AT5) to the tenant before any tenancy agreement is signed, stating that the tenancy on offer is a Short Assured Tenancy. It bears repeating that, if this rule is not followed, you could end up with an Assured Tenancy.

If at the end of one Short Assured Tenancy, the landlord offers the same tenant another Short Assured Tenancy of the same house, he need not serve another Notice AT5 and the new tenancy may be for less than 6 months.

Prior Notification of Grounds for Possession

You may need to give your tenant an extra notice called Prior Notification of Grounds for Possession. This is necessary if you believe you may want to get the property back under Grounds 1 to 5 from the Housing (Scotland) Act 1988.

You must give the tenant the Prior Notification of Grounds for Possession notice before the tenancy agreement is signed if you think you may have to rely on these Grounds to recover possession.
You should keep a copy of this notice - signed, dated and with the time noted by the tenant.

The notice should only include the grounds that are relevant. The most common reasons you may need to rely on this notice are:

• if the property is your own home and you want to live there in the future (Ground 1)

• if there is an outstanding mortgage on the property (Ground 2) - your lender will probably insist that this notice is given to tenants.

Repairing Standard Letter

Rented property must meet the Repairing Standard before it is let and at all times during the tenancy. The Repairing Standard applies to almost all private tenancies in Scotland.

You or someone acting for you must inspect the property to make sure it meets the standard.
At the start of the tenancy (or earlier), landlords must tell tenants about the Repairing Standard and the Private Rented Housing Panel. This is done by giving them the Repairing Standard Letter.

Key Agreement

Although this is not a formal agreement like the notices above, it must be remembered that the tenant is taking the property as their home and becomes the legal occupier. As a result, the tenant has very specific and exclusive rights to use the property as their home. You are only able to access the property with express permission from the tenant. Entry can be refused at any time, regardless of what the lease says. The tenant can demand that the landlord or their agent does not hold keys.

In most cases, and assuming the landlord or agent treats the tenant fairly, they will be happy for keys to be held and used with prior notification. This allows repairs and maintenance to be carried out as required, which is in the interests of both landlord and tenant.

The best way to ensure both parties understand the position is to set up a key agreement. You can find a sample key agreement at the Edinburgh Council website.

Signing the Prior Documents

It is good practice to sign all these documents and serve them on the tenants. One for all tenants is fine - except the AT5, which must be served individually on each tenant.

Get the tenants to sign to confirm they have each received a copy of the AT5 and make sure the time is prior to the time noted on signing the lease.