From 1st December 2017 most of the Private Housing Tenancies (Scotland) Act 2016 will come into force and all private residential tenancies will be subject to the core rights and obligations set out in same.

In the main the Act provides improved security of tenure for tenants and streamlines the provisions for starting and ending a tenancy. It also provides a model tenancy agreement which has now been published by the Scottish Government together with tenancy statutory terms supporting notes and easy read notes

The model Agreement contains both mandatory clauses which must feature in any agreement prepared using this model and further discretionary terms which can be included at the option of the landlord.

If a landlord chooses not to use the model agreement, the landlord is still legally required to give a tenant a copy of the private residential tenancy statutory terms supporting notes.

The Scottish private residential tenancy will become the standard tenancy agreement between residential landlords and tenants and will replace the common types of residential tenancies i.e the short assured tenancy and the assured tenancy.

The main points to note are: