All landlords need a tenancy agreement. This is a very important document as it sets out the basis of the agreement between the landlord and the tenant, for example how the tenant should behave in the property and arrangements for dealing with utility bills and the payment of rent. There are also important clauses that need to be included to protect landlords rights. However many landlords seem to take little interest in what a tenancy agreement actually says, being content just to buy the cheapest document they can find.

There are though a number of hidden problems that can arise with tenancy agreements. For example can you be sure that the terms and conditions are actually valid? The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, which apply to tenancy agreements, say that terms in an agreement which are unfair will be void. This means that if there is a court claim based on a clause in the tenancy, the landlords claim will fail if that clause is not drafted property. Which could cause the landlord a lot of problems.

A classic example of this is the clause forbidding pets. It has been held in a court case (admittedly in Spain, but it is relevant to English law, as these regulations are based on an EU directive) that any tenancy agreement clause which gives a blanket prohibition against pets will be invalid, as it is unfair to forbid certain types of pet which will cause no problem, such as a goldfish. Therefore nowadays the only valid pet prohibition clause is one which has wording providing for the tenant to ask for permission to keep a pet, and saying that the landlord will not unreasonably refuse his consent. If this type of wording is not used, then the clause will be defective and therefore void, and the landlord will have no legal basis for preventing his tenant from keeping, say, a large dog.

A solicitor when drafting a tenancy agreement has to be very careful to make sure that the clauses he writes are written in a way which the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), which polices the unfair terms regulations, will not object to, and which comply with the guidance published by them. You should be very wary therefore of using cheap or free tenancy agreements, which may have been drafted by non specialists, without reference to the OFT guidance, or perhaps before the guidance or the Regulations were published. In particular you should never use a tenancy agreement which was drafted before 2002, as it will contain clauses which although valid at the time it was drafted, will be invalid now.

However, even if the tenancy agreement is drafted in such a way that it is technically unchallengeable under these regulations, it may still be unsatisfactory. The purpose of a written agreement is to set out what has been agreed, and it therefore should be understood by those who sign it. However many tenancy agreements are difficult even for solicitors to understand, let alone ordinary people with little experience of legal documents. They are also generally printed in small font with the clauses very close together to save space, and in no particular order, making them very difficult to use.

If a tenant can read and understand the agreement he has signed, he is more likely to take notice of it. A good agreement will also set out much of the law relating to tenancies, so it will be useful for both parties as a reference document.

The tenancy agreement service from Tessa Shepperson's online service Landlord-Law at www.landlordlaw.co.uk is an attempt to solve these problems. Tessa is a solicitor who has been specialising in landlord and tenant law for many years. All her tenancy agreements are now provided in a plain English format, to make them more understandable by ordinary people. The agreements are also set out in a very clear bold style that makes it both easier to find the clause you are looking for, and to read it when you have found it.

The Landlord-Law service also has many different types of agreement for different situations, including agreements for a room in a shared house, for lets to students and lets to tenants with pets.

For more information visit www.landlordlaw.co.uk and follow the link Download a tenancy agreement in the bullet point list on the home page. Note that during May, Tessa is doing a 31 part detailed series on tenancy agreements on her blog www.landlordlawblog.co.uk .