Rent Assessment Panel

Rent control in Scotland is based upon the statutory codes relating to private sector residential tenancies. Although not strictly within the private sector, tenancies granted by housing associations, etc., are dealt with as far as is appropriate in this context. Controlling prices, along with security of tenure and oversight by an independent regulator or the courts, is a part of rent regulation.

Regarding Rent Act legislation, when the legislation deals solely with the law applicable to private sector residential tenancies, the Act usually covers, mutatis mutantis, both Scotland and England and Wales; but when the legislation also covers other matters, it is more customary for separate parallel Acts to be promoted. Examples of the first category are all the pre-1939 war Acts and the Rent Acts of 1957, 1965 and 1974; and of the second, the Housing Act 1980, in Scotland this is the Tenant's Rights Etc. (Scotland) Act 1980; and the Housing Act 1988, in Scotland this is the Housing (Scotland) Act 1988.

Rent control in England and Wales contains references to legislation applicable only to England and Wales and for which there is no direct or comparable Scottish equivalent. The reasons for this are various and include

It is not necessary in the context of this note to attempt to identify all of the legislation referred to in the previous paragraph and accordingly only the more important Acts and Orders, important (generally but not always) in a policy sense, are listed.

It may be useful at this point to refer to two other more general matters - the Leases Act 1449 and tacit relocation.

In the centuries since 1449 the law south of the border has certainly gone beyond Scots law in the statutory regulation of leases; but Scotland must surely have been the first to confer rights beyond those conferred by the contract of tenancy itself, which prior to 1449 would have been binding only on the parties to it. But the effect of the 1449 Act (which is still on the statute book and which by modern standards is admirably concise, running only to some six lines) is that, where ownership of a property subject to an existing tenancy changes hands, the new owner is bound by the lease and must allow the tenant not only to remain in possession but to do so at the original rent. Thanks to the Act, the tenant has obtained, not only a personal right enforceable against the original landlord, but a real right enforceable against the landlord's singular successor.

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Wikipedia