The Housing (Right to Buy) (Information to Secure Tenants) (Wales) Order 2005

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Order)

Part 5 of the Housing Act 1985 (“the Act”) confers on the secure tenants of certain landlords a right to buy their homes, subject to specific exceptions. Section 189 of the Housing Act 2004 inserts new sections 121AA and 121B in Part 5 of the Act, replacing the duty in section 104(1)(b) of the Act regarding provision by landlords of information in connection with the right to buy. Under these new sections a landlord of secure tenants must now supply those tenants with a document containing information on the matters (and restricted to those matters) specified by the National Assembly for Wales in an order. Landlords may provide information in the form that they consider appropriate, so long as it covers the specified matters. The document must be available at the landlord’s principal offices and at such other places it considers appropriate, and a copy of the current version of the document must be supplied free of charge to any person requesting it.

Article 3 provides that the matters set out in the Schedule are specified as those on which information must be provided. Article 4 specifies when the document must be published. Article 5 gives details of when the document must be supplied to secure tenants. Tenants must be sent the document as soon as practicable after it is first published, whenever it is revised, and in any case at least once in every five years. Each new tenant must be given a copy of the document at the time of signing the tenancy.

Sections 121AA and 121B of the Act refer only to secure tenants exercising the right to buy or the right to acquire on rent to mortgage terms. Information on the right to acquire on rent to mortgage terms is not specified because section 190 of the Housing Act 2004 provides that from 18 July 2005 it is no longer possible to exercise that right. Applications made before that date continue to be valid.

By section 171C(1) of the Act and section 17(2) of the Housing Act 1996, Part 5 of the Act applies also to those tenants who have the preserved right to buy or the right to acquire. Accordingly sections 121AA and 121B, and this Order also apply to those tenants.