Managing your tenancy
Tenants roles and responsibilities
As a tenant, you have a responsibility to allow your landlord to carry out their duties.
You must:
- allow the landlord or manager access, at all reasonable times, to any occupied room
- provide them with any relevant information which would impact you living in the property
- follow the fire safety, litter storage and disposal arrangements in the property
- not prevent the landlord or manager performing their duties
- take reasonable care to avoid damaging anything which the landlord needs to be kept in good repair.
You can report an HMO or landlord to [email protected] if you believe a property is not licensed or think it may not comply with the legislation.
Being a good neighbour
As a tenant, you should be able to enjoy a peaceful home. Your house mates and neighbours also deserve the same. Your actions can directly impact on others.
Each council in Northern Ireland has the authority to investigate noise complaints at any time of the day or night.
If the noise continues in the property, the council may take enforcement action
Most tenancy agreements will now have a clause relating to antisocial behaviour. We would encourage you to read and understand the behavioural clauses in your tenancy agreements and make sure you don’t breach these.
If you’re affected by noise of antisocial behaviour, you can contact your local council. Each council will have details of how to make a noise complaint on their website. Visit nidirect for details of each council’s website (link opens in new window).
Environmental and waste management
Rubbish
Your landlord must provide you with the correct refuse bins or other containers for each household’s needs in the HMO. You must make sure that the waste is picked up on your bin collection day.
At the beginning of a tenancy, your landlord must give you written information in your HMO pack about:
- which day your bins and boxes are collected
- what type of bins to use for household and recycling waste
- details of the council’s bulky waste collection service
- details of the council’s missed bin collection service
- your responsibilities on putting bins and boxes out for collection and returning these promptly to the property after.
If you have extra rubbish that does not fit into your bins, you must arrange for it to be collected within seven days, or as soon as you can. Make sure that rubbish is stored properly at the rear and within the boundary of the property until it is collected.
The landlord will give you suitable refuse storage and make sure it’s collected at the house. They will also make sure that any closable bin(s) work properly and have the correct capacity, following the council’s specifications.
Environmental considerations
Your landlord needs to make sure that any boundary walls, hedges or fences are safe and do not block a public footpath or highway. Any issues should be fixed within four weeks of its appearance.
External and boundary walls of the property (regardless of whether they are shared with someone else) should be free from graffiti. If present, the landlord should remove graffiti within four weeks of its appearance.
External gardens, yards or enclosures within the curtilage of the accommodation should be kept free from litter. The landlord should remove any litter present within four weeks of it appearing.
Generally, issues impacting on public safety should be fixed within 24 hours or four working days, depending on how severe they are.
Maintaining the property
It is important that you look after the property and report maintenance issues to your landlord as early as possible. Your landlord needs to make repairs following these timescales.
- Emergency repairs should be actioned within 24 hours.
- Urgent repairs should be actioned within four working days.
- Routine repairs should be actioned within four weeks.
