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Bill to force landlords into fixing health and safety issues proposed
MPs are set to debate a bill which would make it easier for tenants to force landlords into fixing health and safety hazards.
The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill 2017/19 will have its second reading in parliament on 19 January.
It was put forward as a private members’ bill in July by Karen Buck, Labour MP for Westminster North and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Legal Aid.
The new legislation would build on that bill, extending it to social housing tenants as well as those in the private rented sector.
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Tenants would be able to take action against councils and housing associations to have them rectify ‘category one hazards’ – or those which pose a serious risk to health, such as exposed wiring, broken boilers and heavy mould build-ups.
They would also be able to force landlords to fix problems in their buildings, as well as just their own flats.
The devastating Grenfell Tower fire in June brought into focus tenants’ lack of existing legal options to deal with potential hazards after it emerged that residents’ groups had repeatedly raised safety concerns with their landlord, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Giles Peaker, partner at law firm Anthony Gold, who is helping draft the bill, said: “For private tenants, technically the local authority can take action. If they find a category one hazard they can force the landlord to rectify it. But in practice it’s enormously variable and most authorities are not doing it.
“If local authorities are the enforcement body they can’t take action against themselves. In terms of local authority tenants you are completely reliant on the local authority doing what it should do, which obviously not all of them do.
“For housing association tenants, technically the council can take steps but in my experience they very, very rarely do.”
Tenants can currently take action under Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. However, this legislation only covers disrepair – meaning it cannot be applied in cases where measures to keep accommodation safe are not installed.
Section 80 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 also allows tenants to take action where their own home is affected by a “statutory nuisance” – although this provision does not apply to whole buildings.
It is also possible for tenants to bring forward private prosecutions in magistrates’ courts for extreme cases, but these are technically difficult and unusual.
