According to the Association of Independent Inventory Clerks (AIIC) recent research shows despite the urgent nature of many repairs, only 31% of tenant requests were dealt with even in the same day while 23% took more than a week.
Also, some 34% have faced a home emergency in the past 12 months, with boiler faults and other central heating problems the most common. A quarter of a million private tenants a year are taking matters into their own hands and withholding rent from their landlords because of delays resolving emergencies repairs.
And research from housing charity Shelter earlier this year showed that more than 200,000 rental sector tenants across England are estimated to have faced a ‘revenge eviction’ in the last year after asking for a problem with their home to be put right.
Some 2% of private sector tenants said they had been evicted or served with an eviction notice because they had complained to their landlord, letting agent or council about something that was not the tenant's responsibility, such as a repair that needed fixing.
Pat Barber, chair of the Association of Independent Inventory Clerks (AIIC), is urging landlords to listen to tenants and deal with repairs quickly. ‘Landlords have a duty of care with their tenants and should be responding to emergencies in hours, not days,’ she said.
She gave details of a recent case where a boiler had stopped working for seven weeks during the coldest part of the winter, so no heating or hot water was available in the property. The tenants were not even offered free standing heaters and the landlord ignored all requests. The tenant was too nervous to complain.
‘We have seen similar problems with front door locks that don’t work for weeks, leaks from showers that eventually bring a kitchen ceiling down and taps that don’t work and never get repaired for the whole tenancy, causing the tenants to use a bathroom tap to get water for the kitchen,’ she pointed out.
In another case a tenant was so afraid of his landlord that he lived in a freezing property for three months without reporting that there was a problem with main fuse box. His family had no light and no heating. Unsurprisingly, at the end of the tenancy the place was dripping with mould which had to be cleaned and for which he was duly charged. When asked why he didn’t report it, he said that the landlord was aggressive and had refused to take his phone calls or answer emails, when other minor problems had been reported at the beginning of the tenancy.
AIIC has put together some guidelines on response times for landlords. It says that landlords and agents have a duty of care to advise tenants on the correct course of action while contractors are organised, such as turning off gas taps, water stop cocks or main electricity supplies, to ensure that any problem does not cause danger to life and property.
Any gas or major electrical fault is classed as urgent and should be attended to within 24 hours or less. This also applies when heating or hot water is affected, especially during cold weather.
Water leaks should be seen to within 24 hours, cookers within 48 hours and other broken appliances such as washing machines, dish washers etc should be attended to within 72 hours.
Communication is key and the landlord or agent should keep the tenant informed of the action taken to solve the problem that has been reported, the guidance points out.
