Council tenants: your tenancy agreement

What’s in your tenancy agreement and what happens if you break your tenancy conditions.

What is a tenancy agreement

When you move into a council owned property, you sign a document called a tenancy agreement.

Your tenancy agreement is a legal contract between you as the tenant and Bristol City Council as your landlord.

You must make sure that you, your visitors and any lodgers you might have, follow the rules of your tenancy agreement.

What’s in your tenancy agreement

The council’s tenancy agreement has information about:

• paying your rent
• living in and looking after your property
• nuisance and anti–social behaviour
• ending your tenancy
• what we’re responsible for
• your rights as a tenant

The individual tenancy agreement you sign will have information about:

• when your tenancy starts
• how many people can live in your house or flat
• how much rent you must pay

When you sign your tenancy agreement, you’ll be agreeing to all the terms and conditions set out in the council’s tenancy agreement, and your individual tenancy agreement.

Paying rent

The tenancy agreement has information about paying your rent.

If you have problems paying your rent we'll do all we can to help. You must do something as you could risk losing your home.

You can also sign up for a Bristol Account and see your rent balance and other housing charges online at any time.

Looking after and living at your property

When you sign your tenancy agreement, you agree to live in your property according to the terms set out in the agreement.

• replacing or repairing anything that gets broken because you haven’t looked after it properly
• reporting any repairs that we need to make, for example leaks from pipes, blocked drains or problems with your building
• getting permission to make improvements to your home
• letting council staff into your property if they need to carry out necessary repairs, or safety checks, such as gas servicing
• not leaving your home empty for more than one month without telling us
• not sub-letting part of your home without written permission

Nuisance and anti-social behaviour

You, your family, and any visitors to your home mustn't get involved in anti-social behaviour.

Anti-social behaviour includes:

• causing damage to property
• playing loud music, slamming doors, or being very noisy
• physical or verbal abusive to anyone
• having a dog or animal that is classed as dangerous

If you keep getting involved in anti-social behaviour, we may change your tenancy to a demoted tenancy or family intervention tenancy.

We can also ask a court for a warrant to evict you.

Ending your tenancy

When you want to move out of your home, you’ll need to end your tenancy.

Before you leave your property, you must:

• pay any outstanding rent or other charges
• hand your keys back to us

What we’re responsible for

As part of your tenancy agreement we'll:

• make repairs to your home
• maintain communal areas
• carry out gas and electricity safety checks on appliances that we’ve fitted, such as your cooker, power showers, boilers

If you break your tenancy conditions

If you break the terms of the tenancy agreement, we can:

• extend your trial period by six months or end your tenancy, if you’re an introductory tenant
• get a court order to repossess your home

If we end your tenancy, we'll serve you with a pdf Notice of Termination ( 15 KB ) .

We'll do this either by post or in person.