What a tenancy records, and how a renewal is counted

The documents, and what each one records

Tenancy agreement

The parties, the demise, the term with its start and end dates, the payment day, the notice provisions and the obligations on both sides. Signed and dated by everyone named in it.

Prescribed information

Where the deposit is held, on what terms it may be kept back, and the landlord's address for the service of notices. Served at the start, and served again whenever a name or an address on it changes.

Deposit certificate

The scheme's own evidence that the money is protected, with its reference. A deposit protected but not evidenced is treated as not evidenced.

Inventory and schedule of condition

Room by room, with photographs, agreed at handover. It is the only document a check-out report can honestly be written against.

How to rent

The current government guide, given at the start of the tenancy, with the date it was given noted on the file.

Certificates

The gas safety record, the electrical installation condition report and the energy certificate, each with its own expiry and its own month in the diary.

Check-out report and deposit statement

Written at the end against the schedule of condition, item by item, with fair wear considered and the arithmetic shown.

The terms that are actually read

Most of an agreement is read once. A handful of clauses are read every time a question arrives, and those are the ones worth knowing where to find: the demise, so that it is clear what the tenancy includes; the term and the end date; the notice provisions, including how notice must be given and to what address; the payment day and method; who may occupy; whether assignment or subletting is permitted; the access provision and the notice required before a visit.

Then the repairing split, which is the clause that decides almost every repair argument: what the tenant keeps, what the landlord keeps, and what belongs to the structure or the common parts and therefore to a lease above the tenancy. A break clause, if there is one, is read with the notice provisions beside it, since a break exercised on the wrong date is not a break at all.

Three ways a term can continue

A fixed term does not simply stop. It continues in one of three ways, and which one it is decides what paperwork the continuation needs. A new fixed term by agreement means a fresh document, a fresh start date and the deposit's prescribed information checked against the new names. A statutory periodic continuation means the tenancy rolls on under the law on the same terms, with no new document but the same obligations, and the file should say plainly that this is what happened. A variation of the existing agreement by deed is the third, and is used where the parties and the demise stay exactly as they are and only a term changes.

Whichever it is, the board's row for that interest is updated the same day, because the next notice date is computed from whatever the end date has become.

Counting the notice

The counting has three steps and no judgement in it. The end date comes from the agreement: the start date plus the term, less one day, so a term of twelve months beginning on the first of a month ends on the last day of the twelfth. The last serving day is the end date less the notice period the tenancy requires, counted in whole days. The window opens earlier, at twice that notice period, which is this office's own rule and not a legal one; it exists so that terms can be discussed while there is still time to serve if the discussion goes nowhere.

The planner on the board does exactly that arithmetic and prints the working beside each answer, so it can be checked against a calendar. It is a guide: the notice period itself is set by the tenancy and by law, and neither is decided by this page.

Where each document lives

One file per interest, one section per tenancy, in the order the documents were made. Certificates are filed twice — once in the tenancy section and once in the certificate run that is sorted by expiry month, which is the run the January diary is built from. Correspondence that decides something is filed with the tenancy; correspondence that decides nothing is kept only as long as the matter is live.