CPS Homes

"Tenant-like manner" is no more in Wales, but we've got our clients covered.

You may recall that we previously wrote about “tenant-like manner” – the term that landlords relied upon for decades to illustrate to occupants that they’re expected to do the little jobs around the property that any householder would normally do – and the fact it ceased to exist when The Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 came into force on 1st December 2022.

The term comes from the judgment of Lord Denning in the 1953 ‘Warren v Keen’ case, in which he listed a number of jobs that occupants are expected to perform, such as:

  • Cleaning windows.
  • Replacing fuses.
  • Unblocking sinks/drains.
  • If going away for the winter, taking precautions against damage by frost/ice.
In the years since, more and more has come to fall under “tenant-like manner”, but Welsh Government saw it fit to undo years of case law when they inserted the following term into the Act:

“The rule of law under which a tenant has an implied duty to use demised premises in a tenant-like manner does not apply to a contract-holder if the tenancy is an occupation contract."

We’ve got our clients covered


Not wanting to leave it there, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to protect our clients by inserting many of these everyday jobs into our Written Statement of Occupation Contract (formerly a Tenancy Agreement), meaning occupants remain liable for as much as they would have done under “tenant-like manner” as possible.

Can you think of anything you’d like to see included?


As part of our review process, we need your suggestions. Can you think of something we might have missed? We’ve got the basics covered, such as those listed above, replacing light bulbs, topping up boiler pressure, bleeding radiators and more, but if there’s anything you’d like to put forward, we’re all ears!

Please get in touch with your suggestion(s) and we’ll do our best to include them moving forward. After all, if they’re not included, the responsibility will now fall on the landlord.

10 October 2023

The information contained within this article was correct at the date of publishing and is not guaranteed to remain correct in the present day.

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