Again, as with deposits, I am writing to try explaining legislation that hasn’t bedded in yet. Under the 2004 Housing Acts the government took what many in the industry regard as swingeing steps to protect some categories of tenants who share. Legislation began on 6 April 2006 – indeed, that date is a truly momentous one for tenants. Some landlords with inadequate practice are still shaking their heads in shock at the sheer scale of the changes. 6 April 2006 marks the start date for the single biggest move towards protecting tenants that the UK has ever seen.
So let me tell you exactly what I’d have said had I been present (this incident was reported to me by a shocked MP). Tenants buy the right to be safe in with their rent. I’d also have made sure that this particular character knew that tenants living in bedsits (his favoured option) are six times likelier to die than those living in single occupancy houses. That tenants are 15 times likelier to die if those bedsits are in buildings over three or more storeys. That something has to be done. And that, unless he fancies rent levels equivalent to the ones in the early 1970s, he shouldn’t expect his tenants to live in real versions of Life on Mars.
The Reason For The Rule Changes
Since the 1980s local authorities already had legislation on their books to allow them to insist on stringent safety requirements for many old
buildings/conversions and buildings over several floors. This also applied to homes with multiple ‘households’ – but the wording of what a ‘household’ comprised simply wasn’t clear.
However, in the mid-1990s, a landmark legal case was fought between parties called Barnes versus Sheffield City Council. Barnes claimed that the four students sharing a house he owned all knew one another–had all signed a single joint and several liability lease – and that therefore they could be classed as one ‘household’. And Barnes won.
Meaning that, no matter how squalid the conditions, where several tenants had their name on a single lease, Environmental Health Officers had to presume that the law wouldn’t back them up if they tried to insist on basic,
essential safety.
Up and down the country, this ruling was subsequently tested to virtual destruction. Students and even virtual strangers who could all be persuaded to sign a single lease could be classified as a single household – and no safety regulations could reliably be enforced unless the building fell into particular categories which certainly didn’t include the standard house with several bedrooms. Safety was set back years – while rents and property prices continued to climb.
The 2004 Housing Act is the result – and it has some complex implications that most tenants will never need to worry about. They cover so many issues that no one has even begun to compile a
comprehensive list and I don’t intend to be the first writer to try either. Very roughly speaking, expect regulations on anything hazardous that might injure tenants. And, if you rent in groups (i.e. more than two singletons together on a lease) some of this legislation may affect you.
Here’s what the
www.communities.gov.uk link explains (in brief). The new definition of a household gets rid of the device used in the Barnes v Sheffield case and replaces it with a sweeping definition where
a single person counts as one household and couples count as one household.This legislation overrides the decision to say that four students = one household. Under this legislation four students (or any other four singletons) = four households. A couple (either sex) are classified as one household – if they take in a lodger that becomes two households, i.e. couple + one = two households.