Successions

The right to succeed was introduced by the Housing Act 1980. It has been amended since by the Housing Act 1985 and the Localism Act 2011. How we deal with cases is also influenced by our own Housing Policy and our Tenure Policy.

Successions

Succession can be complex and the legal position is sometimes surprising so it can be helpful to refer to the full guidance note when dealing with a case. The succession flowchart summaries the things you need to establish before you can decide whether a succession has taken place.

Because succession depends on the law and formal council policy agreed by Councillors this guidance is necessarily prescriptive in parts.

The guidance deals with both statutory successions (where someone has a statutory right to succeed according to the law) and also situations where the Council can grant a tenancy to someone who can't succeed. You can read the full guidance covering both here

Remaining joint tenants automatically succeed to a tenancy regardless of how many of them there are or the relationship they had with the tenant. This is called survivorship and counts as a succession so there can be no further successions (apart from to a joint tenant).

Because a joint tenancy stays secure as long as just one joint tenant is in occupation an absent joint tenant succeeds to the tenancy even if they haven't lived in the property for a long time. This is a good reason for joint tenancies to be brought to an end after a joint tenant moves out especially if there are children living with the tenant who has remained in the property who could succeed to a sole tenancy. One of the tenants would need to do this (see joint tenancies guidance).

Last updated: 11 April 2019