Housing ombudsman Dr Mike Biles has told the
Chartered Institute of Environmental Health that ‘retaliatory
evictions’ are a huge evil and should be stamped
out by the Government making it more difficult for
landlords to evict tenants who have tried to enforce
their rights. In an interview with the Institute’s
Environmental Health News he said tenants should be
able to complain about the condition of their homes
without fear of eviction. ‘Courts ought to be
saying "if there is evidence that an eviction
is a retaliation, then we won’t award possession" because
it is a mammoth injustice to give possession because
someone is asserting their rights’.
Last month Citizens Advice claimed many private tenants
fear eviction too much to complain. ‘Evidence shows
that some landlords are using a clause in the law to
evict tenants in retaliation to requests for repairs
or complaints about their accommodation’, it said,
calling for a change in the law to stop use of Section
21 notices where a tenant has recently exercised their
statutory rights regarding disrepair or health and safety
issues.
Owners of undamaged vacant properties in flood
hit areas are being urged to make them available for letting.
This, said the National Association of Estate Agents
would help ease the plight of the thousands of homeless
flood victims. The areas reported to be worst hit by
the flooding include: Humberside, Sheffield, Leeds,
Lincolnshire, Gloucester, Bideford, Ludlow in Shropshire
and Lowdham in Nottingham.
‘Flooding has left a huge amount of devastation
throughout the UK and individuals, couples, families
and the elderly have been forced to leave their damaged
homes and move to cramped hotel rooms due to the acute
shortage of rental properties currently available’,
said NAEA
chief executive Peter Bolton King.
‘It is with this in mind that we are urging owners
of vacant properties in the flooded areas and the surrounding
locations to place their properties available for rent
with the help of local authorities or reputable lettings
agents. This will help ease the shortage and help victims
of this recent torrent of flooding across the UK to start
rebuilding their lives’.
Scottish Widows Bank has announced a reduction
in rental cover required for its buy to let mortgages from 120
per cent to 100 per cent, along with an increase in
the maximum advance of £100,000 to £400,000
for applicants who do not qualify for its ‘Professional
Mortgage’. The maximum property portfolio value
for all applicants is now £1m.
York landlord Salim Amira has told a local newspaper he may sell his properties because the law has now
swung so much in favour of tenants. A landlord for
10 years, Amira said he has had several tenants leave
owing rent for three months and is worried new deposit
protection laws will prevent him using deposits to
help cover such shortfalls. He is now considering putting
three of his seven properties on the market.
'Eco-developer;' Kingerlee Homes is marketing
nine 'eco
excellent homes' in Bladon, Oxfordshire
with a pledge to monitor for two years, using internal
data
loggers, their gas, electricity and water consumption,
as well as temperatures and humidity. ‘This important
research will be carried out in conjunction with Oxford
Brookes University and with the homeowners' consent,
using energy meters that can be monitored with no intrusion
to those living in the property’.
‘We believe this is the first scheme in Oxfordshire
to achieve an ecohomes “excellent” rating’,
said chairman Jonathan Kingerlee. ‘We want to prove
how energy efficient our homes are through the continuous
monitoring of temperature and energy used, enabling us
to learn about the habits of our customers and ensure
the homes are performing as well as they should. This
will lead to further improvements in future schemes which
will be accessed under the new Code for Sustainable Homes’.
Nearly one in five (18 per cent) of homeowners who have
used a builder have suffered damage to their property
through poor work, Abbey Home Insurance has discovered.
It is encouraging homeowners to take more care when
choosing craftsmen to work on their home, ‘as
poor workmanship, poor quality materials and defective
design is unlikely to be covered in their insurance
policy, and, as the research shows, it can be very
hard to recoup the cost of damage from the faulty workmen’.
‘The potential damage that could be caused by
rogue tradesmen is staggering, and we are encouraging
anyone looking to hire a contractor to work on their
home to ensure that they have a reputable background’,
said head of insurance marketing at Abbey, Prasad Shastri. ‘Using
workmen who are less that reputable may seem like the
cheaper option in the first instance, but you may not
have an enforceable contract or any comebacks if the
job goes wrong and that could end up costing a lot more
in the long run’ .
