800 Inspections

If you are a council house tenant or housing association tenant wanting to move home, you may be able to Council House Exchanges your home with another council or housing association tenant – this is called mutual exchange. A mutual exchange gives council tenants the opportunity to live in the property and area that meets their needs. The process involves two or more tenants exchanging their homes, i.e. swapping tenancies thereby, becoming responsible for each other’s rent and tenancy obligations.

Under Section 92 of the Housing Act 1985 all secure council tenants of have a right to Mutual exchanges with another secure council tenant. This was further extended by the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, which allowed secure council tenants to also exchange with assured tenants of registered housing associations or charitable housing trusts. However, many of these have opted out of providing information about their tenants wishing to exchange leaving the tenants to search various media to acquire this information.

All tenants wishing to carry out a Mutual Exchanges must apply to their landlord’s for permission to exchange. The Landlord has a maximum of 42 days from receipt of the application by which to provide the tenant with a written decision. If the written decision has not been provided within the 42-day period the Landlord cannot prevent the mutual exchange from going ahead. There is no magic formula for getting the mutual exchange that you require! It can take many hours of website searching, many subscription payments to various websites, and many cases a lot of disappointment and irritation. But when your mutual exchange has been agreed, approved, and complete the satisfaction, happiness, and contentment achieved can be second to none.

Once you have found your mutual exchange you need to inform your landlord, who then has 42 days within which to disallow or agree the mutual exchange. It may take a much shorter period of time to get the “thumbs up” from your landlord depending on how quickly the housing officer comes to inspect your property. Once the agreement to the mutual exchange has been received the tenant needs to give 28 days notice to his/her landlord of intention to end their tenancy, after this time the exchange date should be set.

If your council or housing association property is over crowded, children need their own rooms, a new baby on the way OR your children have left home and your property is too big for you. Then a mutual exchange maybe the only way to satisfactorily find the home that is right for you. It is the process where by the tenant finds a property that they would like and make arrangements with the other tenant(s) involved to swap homes.
A mutual exchange can be stressful with so many things to organise and pack and unlike a transfer through your social housing landlord you do not get a few days to a week to move as it is not an unoccupied property that you are moving to. Your actual move should take place in a day so that at the same time that you are moving into your new home your counterpart(s) are also moving into their new home. With this in mind a mutual exchange is probably the hardest home move to make and tips and advice should be saught to make it as straightforward as possible. After all, there is always going to be something you overlooked!
When you arrange a Mutual Exchanges be aware that it involves the swapping over of tenancies and tenant responsibilities. So prior to agreeing to exchange make sure that you view the property which you are wishing to exchange to thoroughly, even going back for a second viewing if required. Once the new tenancy is signed you become responsible for any damage or work required on the property as you have been seen to accept them on signing.