A guide to your occupancy agreement
You can ask your support worker about your occupancy agreement. Let them know if you have any problems with your housing or with your landlord. This is explained in your Horton handbook.
Horton is your landlord representative if you live in our Horton supported accommodation.
Your occupancy agreement
The occupancy agreement is a legal contract between you and your landlord. It gives you the right to live in your accommodation as long as you:
- Pay the rent
- Look after your house or flat
- Follow the rules of the agreement.
Date of occupancy
Your occupancy begins on the date in the agreement.
The rent
Rent is what you pay to live in your house or flat. You must pay this regularly. Your landlord will tell you how often and on what day.
The rent and charge for services stays the same for a year. Your landlord will let you know if the rent and service charge is going to change.
Services and basics for your home
Your landlord must make sure that you get the services, household items and everyday basics that are listed in your occupancy agreement.
Services and household costs might include: lighting, heating, water, broadband, a TV licence, home and buildings insurance.
Household items and everyday basics might include: furniture and furnishings (You will get a list of furniture which your landlord provides), alarm system and fire safety equipment, tools for cleaning, laundry, and gardening.
Support
If you live in supported or sheltered housing, your occupancy agreement is likely to include support. You may not be able to carry on living in the house or flat if you choose not to have the support.
If you live in Horton supported accommodation, you can find more information in the support agreement section of our handbook.
If you are with a Horton service but do not live in our accommodation, your support worker should still sign a support agreement with you.
What your landlord must do
Your landlord must keep your home in good repair. This includes making sure the heating, plumbing and lighting work all the time and must also tell you:
- What sort of repair work they are going to do.
- When they will do the repair work.
- How you can complain if you are not happy about the repair work.
What you must do
- Live in your home and not let anyone else live there without your landlord’s permission.
- Keep your home clean and tidy.
- Keep your home, furniture and fittings in good condition.
- Put your rubbish in the bins.
- Contact your landlord if something is broken or needs repairing.
- Ask your landlord if you want to keep any pets.
- Let maintenance workers in to do repairs, decorate or do any other work on your home.
- Respect other people you may live with and be a good neighbour.
- Keep to any other house rules that go with your occupancy agreement, especially about health, fire and safety.
- You may need to let your landlord know if you are going to be away from home for more than a few days.
- If you live in Horton supported accommodation, you must always let us know if you are going to be away from home overnight.
Moving out
You must let your landlord know as soon as possible when you will be moving out.
If you live in Horton supported accommodation, you must sign a vacation form if you are going to leave your home for good. Your support worker can complete the form with you.
If you are leaving the house or flat you must:
- Remove all of your belongings
- Remove any rubbish and leave everything clean and tidy
- Return the keys to your landlord.
What happens if you break the rules in your agreement?
Your landlord will discuss this with you and may take action against you depending upon what has happened. This could include the landlord seeking to end your occupancy agreement
If you live in Horton supported accommodation, we may ask you to meet with us to discuss what happened and how we can support you to prevent it happening again
If you badly break the rules:
We will have a meeting with you and you may be given a warning which is to remind you that if you continue to break the rules, then you are at risk of losing your occupancy and we may ask you to leave our accommodation.
We may pass this to a court and if they agree with our decision, you will have to leave our accommodation.