02 · Obligations

The statutory items, and the document that records each

ABefore a key is handed over

Three of the items below have to exist before the occupation date, not after it. A gas safety record issued in the second week of a contract is a record of a check that should already have happened; a written statement served late is late whatever it says.

The rest are dated obligations that recur. What a file is for is knowing which date each one is counting from.

BRegistration, licensing and who may collect the rent

  1. What the 2014 Act requiresWhat the file holds

  2. Part 1 of the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 requires a landlord of a rental property in Wales to register, and requires anyone carrying out letting or management work to hold a licence.

  3. Letting work and management work are defined separately. A landlord who uses a licensed agent for the work still has to be registered personally.

  4. Right-to-rent immigration checks under the Immigration Act 2014 apply to England. They do not apply to a dwelling in Wales.

CThe written statement and the terms inside it

The written statement of the occupation contract is due within fourteen days of the occupation date. It is not a covering letter attached to an agreement: it is the agreement, in the form the 2016 Act sets out, and it carries four kinds of term.

  1. Key matters

    Name the parties, the dwelling, the occupation date and the rent.

    Taken from the signed terms

  2. Fundamental

    Carry the statutory provisions of the 2016 Act itself.

    Modified only where the Act allows

  3. Supplementary

    Carry the day-to-day arrangements between the parties.

    May be varied by agreement

  4. Additional

    Carry anything else the parties have agreed between them.

    Written in, never assumed

Written statement, signed and datedThe Welsh Government publishes model written statements in Welsh and in English. Where a contract-holder asks for the Welsh text, that is the copy that goes in the file alongside the English one. A variation agreed mid-contract is recorded as a variation and served the same way: the original statement is not rewritten, and the superseded version stays in the file.

DFitness, alarms, fuel, and the items that are easy to forget

  1. Fitness

    The Renting Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) (Wales) Regulations 2022 list the matters and circumstances by which fitness is judged, and they apply for the whole of the contract, not only at the start.

  2. Alarms

    A smoke alarm in working order on each storey, mains-connected in the circumstances the regulations describe, and a carbon monoxide alarm in every room with a gas, oil or solid fuel appliance.

  3. Electricity

    The electrical installation inspected and tested at intervals of no more than five years, with the report given to the contract-holder.

  4. Gas

    Gas appliances, fittings and flues checked for safety every twelve months by an engineer on the Gas Safe Register, under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998.

  5. Energy

    An energy performance certificate is valid for ten years and has to be available to anyone viewing the dwelling, not produced later on request. A dwelling heated by oil or by liquefied petroleum gas will usually sit lower on the scale than one on mains gas, which matters when minimum standards are applied.

  6. Water

    A legionella risk assessment is a health and safety duty rather than a housing one. It is proportionate: for most single dwellings it is a short written assessment of the hot and cold water system, reviewed when the system changes.

Every item named on this page is a duty owed by the landlord. An agent carries out the work and keeps the record; it does not take the duty over. Deposits run on their own clock

Next: the schedule of condition, which is the one document on the file that nobody is required to produce and everybody wishes they had. Check-in and check-out · Reporting and access · Back to what is held here