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Welcome to Wise Owl Property.
19th March 2024

Office Hours:

Mon to Fri: 9:30am - 4:30pm
Saturday & Sunday: Closed

Email us:

Who’s responsible, Landlord or Tenant?

If you rent your property through a private, social housing landlord or letting agent then they have certain mandatory responsibilities to ensure that the property is kept maintained and suitable for habitation.

As a tenant you also have responsibilities and a duty of care to ensure that the house is kept in good order and that your actions don’t cause damage or allow the house to fall into disrepair. All repairs should be reported to us by email (info@wiseowlproperty.co.uk) at the earliest time. Some repairs and maintenance issues if left could cause serious damage. The landlord will not be responsible for the repairs until any time after they are notified.

 

If you are unsure on who is responsible it is always best to check your Tenancy Agreement as this includes important information on Tenant and Landlord Responsibilities.

As a tenant you are responsible for:

  • Looking after your home by using it in a tenant-like manner.
  • Reporting problems as soon as is reasonably practicable.
  • Providing access to have any repairs carried out.
  • Having a duty of care to your visitors and repairing any damage caused to the property and it’s contents by them.
  • Doing minor repairs yourself such as changing fuses and light bulbs.
  • Keeping the inside and outside of your home reasonably clean and tidy.
  • Not causing any damage to the property and making sure your visitors don’t cause any damage.
  • Using any fixtures and fittings properly, for example, not blocking a toilet by flushing something unsuitable down it.
  • Clearing blockages from internal drains such as sinks, toilets, and baths.
  • If you rent a whole property from us not a room in a shared house, you are responsible for repairing and replacing the appliances. You are responsible for your own appliances and any items you’ve had installed.

Your landlord is responsible for:

Generally, your landlord is responsible for repairing:

  • The structure and exterior of your home, for example, the walls, roof, foundations, drains, guttering and external pipes, windows and external doors
  • Basins, sinks, baths, toilets and their pipework.
  • Water and gas pipes, electrical wiring, water tanks, boilers, radiators, gas fires, fitted electric fires or fitted heaters.
  • Your landlord is responsible for all supplied electrical or gas goods.

Your landlord mustn’t pass the cost of any repair work that is their responsibility on to you.

Pests and Vermin – Who’s responsible?

Rats, mice, ants, fleas slugs etc are all commonly reported to landlords as a problem but who is responsible for dealing with such problems?

Well working out who’s responsible for dealing with an infestation depends on several things, including:

  • whether there’s anything about it in your tenancy agreement, or
  • whether your home was infested before you moved in, or
  • if the problem is being caused or made worse by disrepair, or
  • if something that you’ve done or haven’t done has led to the problem.

It’s not always straightforward working out who’s responsible. An Environmental Health Officer might be able to identify the cause of an infestation, which in turn might help work out who’s responsible.

Dampness

In many cases, your landlord is responsible for dealing with rising damp. This is because there’s a term implied into your tenancy agreement which says that it’s their responsibility to keep the exterior and structure of your home in repair.

If there’s a problem with an existing damp-proof course (DPC) in your home which is causing the dampness, then your landlord is likely to be responsible for repairing it. However, they need to know about the problem first.

If your home doesn’t have a DPC, your landlord may not be responsible for putting one in. This is because the work may be regarded as an improvement rather than a repair. Each case would have to be considered on its own facts.

Condensation dampness

if there’s no express term in your tenancy agreement your landlord may still be responsible under an implied term. There’s an important term implied into tenancy agreements which says that a landlord is responsible for keeping a number of things in repair.

This means that your landlord is likely to be responsible for dealing with condensation dampness where it’s caused by an underlying disrepair problem that they’re responsible for. For example:

  • your heating isn’t working, or
  • there isn’t enough ventilation, for example, your windows won’t open, or
  • there’s an excess of water vapour in your home because of another type of damp problem, such as rising damp.

Also, where the effects of condensation dampness can be shown to have caused disrepair, for example, it has caused window frames to rot or has damaged plasterwork, the landlord is likely to be responsible. HOWEVER if the dampness or mould is caused by living conditions i.e lack of ventilation, inadequate use of supplied central heating, drying clothes on radiators, constant boiling of pots and pans, dirty living conditions or cluttered spaces then it would be the tenants responsibilities to implement change so that the condensation and subsequent mould could be maintained and managed suitably.

For further advice on problems then please see the following links:

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