Standards for rental accommodation


If dealing with the local authority when it comes to tenants, they demand a Seperate power source for a shower fan, I had to do it in 2018.

Stupid admittedly but there you are, in a private tenant situation, the regs are sometimes less strict
 
galway_blow_in said:
If dealing with the local authority when it comes to tenants, they demand a Seperate power source for a shower fan, I had to do it in 2018.

Stupid admittedly but there you are, in a private tenant situation, the regs are sometimes less strict
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Maybe that only applies in the county where you are. I bet anything each local authority has devised their own rules on what the legislation/regulations mean.
 
I am bit concerned by some of the landlords comments here.

A local authority can only demand that you comply with the law. They cannot demand you to go beyond that.

They can of course ask you to do anything that comes into their pointy little heads.

A landlord should always ask what is the legal basis for any request made by a local authority. The local authority cannot make up new demands as they go along, neither have they authority to produce a definitive interpretation of the law.

But if they say "jump" and the landlord says "how high", then the landlord has only themselves to blame if they end up doing stupid things.

I had a HAP inspection over a year ago and I wrote to the council asking what was the legal basis of one of their requirements, I received a reply thanking me for my letter. If landlords don't call their bluff, and they do bluff trying to see what they can get away with, why shouldn't they demand whatever.

see thread https://www.askaboutmoney.com/threads/hap-inspection.210595/
 
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Bronte said:
Maybe that only applies in the county where you are. I bet anything each local authority has devised their own rules on what the legislation/regulations mean.
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It's possible, I don't know, council rep who gave me a list was OK for the most part.
 
galway_blow_in said:
If dealing with the local authority when it comes to tenants, they demand a Seperate power source for a shower fan, I had to do it in 2018.

Stupid admittedly but there you are, in a private tenant situation, the regs are sometimes less strict
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In your scenario was the shower fan required (internal room, no windows), and do you mean they required a separate switch to control it? That would indeed be beyond the requirements, but it also wouldn't surprise me.
 
cremeegg said:
A local authority can only demand that you comply with the law. They cannot demand you to go beyond that.
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They can and do. In the two reports I've seen they have gone beyond the regulations. In one case, an apartment with no open flame cooking or heating source and electric storage heating they insisted on the installation of a carbon monoxide alarm. In the other, a 1940's LA build, they insisted on a minimum free area of 6500 sq mm of ventilation in all habitable rooms.

The building regs clearly state that they are not applicable to older buildings, and their application may not even be applicable to renovations of older buildings. In a building as porous as a corpo build of that era, putting a hole in the wall of more than 9cm diameter in a room makes for an uncomfortable environment. Note the free area is calculated based on the open spaces in any grill fitted to the vent, so in order to comply with their requirements you need to fit a 5" core with a minimal cover.

Part of the problem perhaps is that the rental standards regs are quite vague, using terms such as 'where necessary' or 'adequate', without referring to a definitive source. I wonder what might have happened had to two people who shared reports with me pushed back, but in both cases they said the inspectors seemed quite reasonable, so they wanted to comply rather than risk the HAP payments stopping.
 
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In your scenario was the shower fan required (internal room, no windows), and do you mean they required a separate switch to control it? That would indeed be beyond the requirements, but it also wouldn't surprise me.
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Regular bathroom with window but yet they demanded it,shower fan has its own independent switch, no doubt the tenant never even turns the thing on where as if the fan were on the same power as the light switch, the fight against dampness would be better served

PS, I've the house let to the council for ten years so I didn't select the tenant.
 
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My property is a terraced house built in 1895, I wasn't going to drill holes in a stone built house with brick facade so retro fitted the windows to meet ventilation regs

Wasn't good enough, council inspector said the rooms were too small for trickle vents to suffice, I then had to fit two slated vents on the roof and fit two Duct pipes down through the attic from the aforementioned slate vents, he let me off with the downstairs rooms as you couldn't do anything bar drill through the walls and no way was I doing that, two different drill specialists refused, bathroom and kitchen were modern block wall extensions so no issue drilling hole in bathroom wall for shower fan
 
galway_blow_in said:
I wrote a lengthy letter to Limerick city Council back in May
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And..., don't leave us hanging.

I guess that you heard nothing from the council as they haven't a leg to stand on but they dont like to admit that.

As an aside, a separate power source for a shower fan is something I installed on the advice of my electrician, nothing to do with the council. I dont really know if it is necessary, but if my electrician suggested it, its probably standard practice.
 

Sorry cremeegg, that was mistakenly put in there by mistake, different issue, might detail it some other time, been chastised for going off topic before
 
Appears my council inspector was rather difficult, at the time I thought he was OK, the jobs weren't terribly costly though I was annoyed about fitting the Duct pipe from the slated vent as I suspect it will eventually cause potential dampness in the attic, heard conflicting reports about such an instalation, one guy said it will create draught in the upstairs bedrooms but that's all, the other tradesman reckoned the cold air coming in from outside to a warm place like an attic will create moisture build up

Despite the high standards demanded by the local authority, they don't give a damn what the person who lives in it does to the house, I've inspected my house once since last July and the backyard is full of rubbish, the local council do not enforce any standards on their tenants, in fact they farm out management of the houses to other bodies, I had a social worker type individual show me around

The council are my tenant under the long term leasing arrangements, person living in the property is the councils tenant
 
galway_blow_in said:
It's possible, I don't know, council rep who gave me a list was OK for the most part.
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Would you mind sending me the list, just delete your details. Or even better put it up on here so we can see what it is the different councils are looking at.
 
I don't think they'd stop the HAP, the councils are dying to get landlords to sign up. When I was initially signing up to HAP I nearly gave up with the amount of stuff they were asking off me and they phoned me from Limerick (that's the payment office for the country for HAP or something) and begged me to keep going.

I can't get my tenants to put on the heat in the bathroom (told me ' we never use that') when I inspected recently. And they clearly wouldn't dream of using the fan if it had a separate switch. That's just a plain crazy suggestion unless there is some reason it's dangerous to have the light and fan together. Which is the norm in any house I've been in. My own shower is like that.
 
Bronte said:
I don't think they'd stop the HAP, the councils are dying to get landlords to sign up.
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In one of the cases I know of it was a tenant in situ that had switched over to HAP during the tenancy, and the inspection happened a few months after that again. There was the threat that payments would be stopped if issues were not rectified by a certain date, but I've no idea how they'd respond if the landlord pushed back. Rock and a hard place though when the tenancy is established, you'd potentially have to go down the road of evicting them for non-payment of rent if the LA stopped payment and the tenant didn't pay. That could get very messy and expensive.
 
RE: Light and fan feed seperate. Is it not a case that you need a separate line feed which can isolate each unit. I have a fuse outside the bathroom which allows for the fan to be disabled separate from the light but both come on together when the light switch is on (The fan keeps going for 10 minutes after light switch off).
 
Just had an inspection done (I'm the landlord, we have a HAP tenant) and they have advised we need " a cooker good or extractor fan vented to external air". That's fine but the cooker hood sits on an internal wall in an apartment block.
There is a window 2 feet away, a balcony door 6 feet away. I called the inspection company who said the window and door are not counted in compliance. He suggested a wall mounted extractor fan but I'm still left with no option to vent it. I assume my management company won't let me drill a hole in the external wall and if I just vent through the window, the tenant is as likely to remove the hose as not open the window in the first place. Anyone come across this before and have a suggestion please?

Inspector also said a carbon hood/ filter is not compliant.

Thanks
 
PickerUpper said:
That's fine but the cooker hood sits on an internal wall in an apartment block.
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This suggests that someone changed the layout of the apartment at some stage and moved the kitchen. Not a help to your question I know unless it's easy to see where the kitchen used to be and somehow get a pipe to the vent.
 
PickerUpper said:
Inspector also said a carbon hood/ filter is not compliant.
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The inspector may well be correct, but I would confirm this independently first.

You can read the regulations as well as the inspector. His interpretation does not have the force of law.

If you disagree with him ask for his opinion in writing. He may well back off.
 
elcato said:
This suggests that someone changed the layout of the apartment at some stage and moved the kitchen. Not a help to your question I know unless it's easy to see where the kitchen used to be and somehow get a pipe to the vent.
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Nope, we've owned it since it was built so no movement of any rooms/ fixtures.
 
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