English Tenants Earn The Right To Kick The Tires On Housing Rentals

Gawkers cluster around a new electric car
Curious but not necessarily convinced. A new English law encourages renters to kick the tires on prospective housing in no less than 29 different ways.

In the midst of the COVID-19 uproar, a new law benefiting English tenants crept into being with little fanfare. Tenants and landlords have for 35 years been ‘protected’ by the Landlord And Tenant Act of 1985. During that time, profound changes have occurred that disadvantaged tenants. In the free market, they were and still are vulnerable to capricious evictions and rent hikes while housing costs have soared and more and more people rely on renting.

In the social housing sector, sell-offs under the Right to Buy program decreased the availability of social housing. Demolition of prematurely aged social housing stock has made the situation worse. Austerity programs meanwhile have decreased funding for existing repairs, forcing many tenants to live in housing that endangers their health, with little recourse.

On March 20, 2020, the Fitness For Human Habitation Act came into force. It identifies 29 specific health dangers that landlords are responsible to address.

Moreover, it has provided tenants with teeth to bite landlords who simply ignore repair requests. Tenants with problems no longer need to appeal to councils or housing authorities for support in their claims. Nor do they need to get on a waitlist for action by Environmental Health, which is a department of the local council.1

The new act empowers tenants to take landlords directly to court. The new law applies to free market landlords, and local councils and non-profits that manage social housing.

Many folks who have reason to rent cars are familiar with a pre-rental walk-around to note and register existing damage. A publication catering to building owners, landlords and their agents explains why a documented walk-around with a 29 point checklist is now a sensible precaution before renting out a property. Prospective tenants would be wise to follow the same advice.

Read more in Letting Agent Today: Agents Beware: All Tenancies Subject To ‘Human Habitation’ From Tomorrow

Footnotes

  1. For tenants living in council housing, this meant one part of council would be investigating another, an impossible task.

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