Housesitting in the United Kingdom

The lurid version is mostly myth. The Occupiers' Liability Act 1984 gives a trespasser only a narrow duty — death or injury, not damaged property — and none at all against an obvious risk they choose to run: a man who dived into a shallow lake past warning signs lost at the House of Lords (Tomlinson v Congleton, 2003), and one who jumped into a pool past signs in winter lost too, having accepted the risk (Ratcliff v McConnell, 1999). But the opposite folklore — that you can do as you like to an intruder — is also wrong: a householder who shot a burglar still faced a partial claim because the force used was excessive (Revill v Newbery, 1996). As the person minding the home you briefly stand in the occupier's shoes, so the line is worth knowing — it runs between those two myths, not at either end.

A TV Licence covers a single address and everyone watching live TV or BBC iPlayer there — the holder, their family, and any visitor or worker — so a sitter using the home's set, or any device plugged into its mains, is covered by the homeowner's licence. The wrinkle is the battery rule: watch live TV or iPlayer on a device running solely on its own internal battery and you count as covered by your own home licence instead, wherever you are — so without one of your own, that viewing isn't covered. A self-contained annexe is separate again, and needs its own licence.

Two separate worries get muddled here, and neither lands. The criminal offence of squatting in a residential building (section 144 of the LASPO Act 2012) only catches someone who entered as a trespasser — and it expressly is not committed by 'a person holding over after the end of a lease or licence,' which is precisely the sitter who overstays. Owning-by-occupation — 'adverse possession' — is a different thing again: it takes ten years' exclusive possession of registered land under the Land Registration Act 2002, after which the owner is notified and can defeat almost any claim simply by objecting, so a fortnight's sit isn't remotely close. What remains if a sitter refuses to go is an ordinary civil matter, recovering possession once a licence has ended — not a police-proof occupier, and not a home you can lose. Keeping the sit clearly dated and in writing is what stops it ever getting that far.

The Control of Dogs Order 1992 requires every dog on a highway or in a place of public resort to wear a collar with the owner's name and address inscribed on it or on an attached plate or badge — and a microchip doesn't satisfy it, because the point is identification readable on the spot (microchipping is a separate duty again). The offence falls on 'the owner or the person in charge of the dog,' so a sitter out walking someone else's dog is squarely within it; it's enforced by the local authority rather than the police, and carries a fine. A handful of working dogs are exempt — packs of hounds, sporting and herding dogs, guide dogs, and police or rescue dogs — but an ordinary pet on its evening walk is not. The Order runs across Great Britain; Northern Ireland keeps its own dog rules.

Money isn't the test. Across legal systems, what makes an arrangement binding is that two people genuinely agreed to it and meant it to count — not whether cash changed hands or anything was signed, and it can be spoken or shown by conduct rather than written down. (Some systems look for something given on each side — here, James's care for Sarah's keys and a roof; others ask only that the promise was seriously meant. A housesit clears either bar.) So 'no cash, nothing signed' is the wrong line everywhere. The subtler, equally universal catch: a purely social favour can fall short of an intended legal commitment, and even a binding deal is painful to prove once memories differ. Agreeing clear terms up front helps with both, which is the point of agreeing them.

In most systems an agreement can be oral or formed by conduct; a signature and a formal document aren't what make it binding. What's hard about an informal deal isn't its validity — it's proving what was actually agreed once memories differ. Writing the terms down doesn't create the obligation; it records it, so nobody has to argue about it later.