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Tenancy issues

The Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) and registered housing associations deal with a wide range of issues relating to their tenants. They aim to treat all tenants the same and will not discriminate against anyone.

The Tenancy Agreement

When someone moves into their Housing Executive or housing association home, they receive a copy of the Tenancy Agreement. This clearly states what a tenant’s responsibilities are and outlines all of the conditions of the tenancy. These refer to various issues including paying rent, nuisance, harassment, damage and the keeping of pets.

For more information, please view the following documents:

If tenants cause or allow others to break those conditions, the association will take action and as a last resort apply to obtain a court order which will bring the tenancy to an end. The Tenancy Agreement also outlines the Housing Executive or housing association’s obligations to tenants such as carrying out repairs.

Neighbour disputes

Many day-to-day neighbourhood disagreements can be resolved with amicable conversation between neighbours without any need to contact NIHE or the housing association. Sometimes this will not be the case and you may wish to report an incident or series of incidents.

It is always sensible to try and deal with a situation before things escalate. The Housing Executive or your housing association can help you and will take neighbourhood disputes and anti-social behaviour very seriously.

What is anti-social behaviour?

Anti-social behaviour includes a wide range of problems and there are many things that can be done to tackle it. The Housing Executive and your housing association, along with other agencies, have a range of tools available to them to make sure anti-social behaviour is stopped quickly.

Some of these are available to the Housing Executive and housing associations - as landlords - to stop anti-social behaviour where it is affecting, or being caused by, their tenants.

Other tools are available that can be used to tackle anti-social behaviour no matter who is causing it or who it is affecting. Occasionally some types of anti-social behaviour may involve serious criminal activity and where this is the case, the police should be notified immediately.

Stopping anti-social behaviour

A tenancy agreement is a legally binding document and if the terms of the agreement are broken or if tenants are acting in a anti-social manner the Housing Executive or housing association can apply to the courts to have the tenant evicted.

The Housing Executive and housing associations will work very closely with the police to try and reduce incidents of anti-social behaviour but they also rely on co-operation from tenants and leaseholders.

Housing information in other languages

You can find out more about the housing rights of EEA nationals in Northern Ireland by visting the Housing Advice website:

The site is available in English, Polish, Lithuanian, Slovak, Russian and Portuguese. You can learn more about renting privately, homelessness, sharing a home, paying for your accommodation and other issues that affect migrant workers:

More useful links