Skip to main content

More Regulation for Landlords


New electrical safety regulations were presented before Parliament last month.

The move by the Government will strengthen electrical safety practices and bring them into line with those already well established within gas safety regulations in private residential tenancies.

The regulations, if implemented, will only affect private residential tenancies – first, new tenancies from July 1 this year, and those tenancies already in existence from April 1, 2021.
The proposal will move to ensure all electrical wiring and fixed electrical installations are signed off and reported by a qualified electrician.

This report will be required to be shown at the outset of every new tenancy and renewed at least every five years, if not earlier, dependent on any electrics or fixed electrical installations that are altered or changed by the landlord. If the report highlights any issues, the landlord will be required to remedy the issue within 28 days or sooner dependent on the recommendation within the report.

If the landlord does not comply with the recommendations made in the report, and this is notified to the local authority, the council has the power to issue a potential fine of up to £30,000. The council will also be granted the power to carry out the recommended works and seek to impose the costs of such actions on to the landlord along with the potential fine of up to £30,000. The most likely route would be that the local authority will look to serve a further notice of 28 days for the landlord to carry out the specified works, before looking to impose further actions and potential fines.

Landlords and their agents will need to ensure their properties are compliant with the regulation for any new tenancy, and it is possible we may see more properties coming on to the market for sale if landlords are unable or unwilling to comply with the regulations.

The regulations seek to ensure that the policing is self-compliant, with landlords and letting agents unable to market a property without the appropriate electrical report.

Is this fair? Yes, as safety is key. While the policy is aimed at those worst offending landlords who may undertake illegal electrical works, all landlords must now pick up the mantle and ensure their properties are safe.

Extracted from Property Industry Eye 19 February 2020


We will shortly be writing to all our landlord clients suggesting they get ahead of the regulations and organise testing and possibly repair now before the regulations create a log-jam with electricians unable to deal with the volume of work to comply in time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

House builders discuss 95% mortgages with lenders

So the house builders and the lenders have had a meeting to discuss how they can create 95% mortgages. Basically a good thing, as you would imagine most estate agents would say. But what proportion of the housing Market is represented by new homes sales to first time buyers? Also any first time buyer who purchases a new home is then a cost to the second hand Market of who knows how many sales! If I think back 30 years my wife and I as first time buyers were providing a deposit of 10%. To do this we sold her car, saved up by not going out as much and generally committed ourselves to the task of buying our first home together. Ah, you might say, but house prices were so much cheaper then. True but my salary was just under £2,000 per annum with the prospect of perhaps another £1,000 in commission from selling at lease 6 houses per month personally. The first 4 didn't count towards commission but were to cover my costs to my employer! I personally don't think 95% mortgages are ...
3 comments
Read more

My Job has gone, how do I pay my rent?

These are unusual, dare I say unprecedented times. People are losing jobs and being laid off or ‘furloughed’. The latter is an American word and the best definition I’ve found is: 1:  to grant a leave of absence or  furlough  to (someone) a soldier being  furloughed, a  furloughed  prisoner 2 :  to put (a worker) on furlough:   to lay off (a worker) for usually a brief or temporary period Apparently, the earliest use of the word as in case 2 was 1781 ! At least in the 2020 use of the word government are proposing in the UK to pay furloughed workers 80% of their basic pay. The employer needs to pay it then claim it back from HMRC. But not everyone is that fortunate and the self-employed have a more difficult route to follow although they are intended to be supported. If you are a tenant, then we recommend you visit the following webpages: https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus  Scroll past the black background page ...
Post a Comment
Read more