Ms Rosalind Carroll:

If someone comes along and claims that it is a licence agreement and we say that we think it is a tenancy agreement, we get proof and we go to court and we prove it. Currently, non-registration is a criminal offence and we would then prosecute that through the courts where we have proof. It sometimes is difficult for us to get that proof. That is the difficulty sometimes of having criminal legislation; it means that the person has the right to not incriminate themselves, and therefore we do not have investigative powers. The whole point of the new legislation coming in is that it is a civil sanction, which sometimes seems less but actually gives my organisation the power to go out and deal with issues more practically.

On the issue of trying to get to the Deputy's understanding of the protections afforded by RTB, I will try to explain and perhaps my colleague might also come in. With regard to licence agreements, many of these student accommodation providers - whether on purpose or not - will have deemed these to be licence agreements. Many of the providers might think genuinely that they are licence agreements. In our opinion, and it is only our opinion because a court would have to decide with us, in a lot of those cases it may be labelled as a licence agreement but in practice, a tenancy agreement is actually in place. It is the practice that matters. Where there is an uncertainty we want tenants to come to us. We can hear it as a jurisdiction matter in the first instance of a dispute being raised. It can come to us a dispute and we can hear whether the RTB has jurisdiction in the matter. We can then get into the whole issue of proving whether it is a tenancy or a licence agreement. We would be able to deal with it on an evidence-based format within that. If it is then found to be a tenancy agreement, we can deal with the second dispute or matter if there is an issue regarding rent, or something else. It could be about a deposit or landlord obligations around maintenance. Equally, it could be the landlord taking a case on rent arrears or another issue.

That is my understanding. Ms Fogarty, who is our head of legal affairs, is much more familiar with the technicalities in terms of licences and tenancies.