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Council hails 'significant' ruling on affordable heating
A north-west council has won a ‘significant’ tribunal which found that a heating system installed by a private landlord breached health and safety rules because it was too expensive for the tenant to use.
Frank Hont, cabinet member for housing at Liverpool City Council, said as a result of the ruling on 17 June, it was now ‘firmly established that landlords cannot rely on inefficient and expensive heating for tenants’.
Liverpool CIty Council initially issued an enforcement notice on landlord Anwar Hadi Kassim after environmental health officers determined his rental property in Wavertree was a severe threat to health or safety because tenants were unlikely to be able to afford adequate heating.
The notice required Mr Kassim to replace the existing panel convector heaters and a towel rail – which operate on peak electrical tariff – with cheaper gas central heating or fan-assisted storage heating.
In March 2011 Mr Kassim won a case taken to a residential property tribunal, which ruled there was no requirement for a heating system to be affordable.
But the council appealed to an upper tribunal, which overturned the decision and ordered the case be heard again. On 17 June another residential property tribunal ruled in the council’s favour.
The authority successfully argued that tenants were ‘likely to be in income poverty’ by using data on deprivation from the Office of National Statistics.
The tribunal agreed that the current heating provision at the flat resulted in a Category 1 hazard for excess cold under the Housing Act 2004.
Mr Hont said: ‘This is a very significant ruling. Fuel poverty is a real issue in the city and it has now been firmly established that landlords cannot rely on inefficient and expensive heating for tenants.
‘This decision will have nationwide repercussions and will be welcomed by tenants throughout the country.’
Bob Mayho, housing policy officer at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, said the ruling could be ‘very significant’, but that property tribunal rulings do not set legal precedents.
Stephen Battersby, an environmental health and housing consultant and chair of the Pro-Housing Alliance campaign group, said: ‘I think it is important for other local authorities to take note of this case and how the evidence was assembled, although as a first-tier tribunal decision itself does not set a precedent.
‘At least this tribunal took account of the upper tribunal view which does set a precedent on the issue of affordability.’