Short Scottish Secure Tenancy for homeowners: guidance for social landlords

1. Introduction and Background

1.1 The Housing (Scotland) Act 2014 introduced new provisions covering the allocation of social housing and the granting of short Scottish secure tenancies (short SSTs). This guidance has been developed with the help of tenants, landlords and other stakeholders and will help landlords to use the new provisions that relate to the allocation of tenancies to homeowners, should they choose to do so.

1.2 This guidance and the new provisions will take effect from 1st May 2019^[1]. In addition landlords should use the following secondary legislation in relation to short SSTs which also come into force on 1st May 2019:

• The Short Scottish Secure Tenancies (Notice) Regulations 2018;
• The Short Scottish Secure Tenancies (Proceedings for Possession) Regulations 2018.

1.3 Section 5 of the 2014 Act amends section 20 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987 to remove the prohibition on taking ownership of property into account in allocating social housing. Landlords may now take into account the ownership and/or value of heritable property owned by the person applying for housing, a person who normally lives with the applicant or a person who it is proposed would live with the applicant. (There are some exceptions, see below.)

1.4 Landlords can decide whether or not to use this flexibility and may decide to allocate social housing in circumstances where an applicant owns property. Landlords should however clearly set out their rules for taking property ownership into account in their allocations policy.

1.5 Section 8 of the 2014 Act introduces the flexibility for landlords to give a short SST to a homeowner to meet a temporary housing need. It does this by inserting a new ground for the granting of such a tenancy into schedule 6 to the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001.