Your Responsibilities

If you have a Scottish secure or short Scottish secure tenancy you have many rights as a tenant. However, you also have certain responsibilities.

It's important you keep to the terms of your tenancy agreement, otherwise you may get evicted.

Make yourself at home.

It may sound obvious, but in order to keep your tenancy, you need to live in the house and use it as prinicpal home. You must let us know if you plan on going away for a long period usually four weeks. If we have reasons to believe you have abandonded the house we may take it back.

Keep up to date with your rent

It's important that you pay your rent on time, otherwise your landlord may try to evict you. If you're having problems paying your rent, please contact a member of our income maximisation team

Take care of your property

As a Scottish secure or short Scottish secure tenant, you have several responsibilities relating to maintaining your home:

•You need to look after the property as best you can and avoid causing damage to it, or to your neighbours' property.

•Report any damage or disrepair to us as soon as possible, we can't fix it if we don't know about it.

•If you do cause any damage or break anything, you'll need to repair or replace it. This does not include any fair wear and tear.

•You are also responsible for decorating and for carrying out minor repair (for example, checking smoke and CO (carbon monoxide) alarms are working, changing light bulbs.

•If you notice that the structure of the building or any of the installations (for example, the heating system or the drains) need repair work done, it's up to you to you to let us know.

•You are also responisble for looking after some commonunal areas, this includes your garden and stair cleaning if you live in a tenement.

•Make sure your rubbish is bagged up, put in the right bins and put out on the correct day for collection. 

Be nice to your neighbours

You, and anyone living with you or visiting you, should take care not to behave in an anti-social way that could upset, annoy or cause nuisance to your neighbours.

Anti-social behaviour can include things like:

•Making too much noise for example TV, sound systems or DIY
•Failing to keep your pets under control
•Allowing your children to be a nuisance
•Leaving rubbish piled up everywhere
•Using the house for illegal or immoral purposes, such as drug dealing.

In addition, you should never behave in an aggressive, intimidating or insulting way towards any member of staff or a neighbour.

Anti-social behaviour is a ground for eviction, so treat people how you would like to be treated.

Ask permission before making changes

As a Scottish secure or short Scottish secure tenant, you need to ask permission from your landlord if you want to:

• Make improvements to the property  

• Add a person to your household

• Run a business from your home.

Your tenancy agreement may state other things you need to ask permission for, such as keeping a pet or parking a caravan on the property.

Always make your request in writing and make sure you get permission in writing too.