28th
Jul 2017
The Citizens Advice claims that private renters are in fear of eviction if they ask their landlord to carry out repairs in their 'home'....so they just don't bother. The charity wants an independent complaints' body to be set up to judge these types of issues.
In its latest report, the Bureau also claims that more than 20% of private renters (which equates to 1.85 million households) over the last four years have had to wait a considerable time for a work/repair to be carried out in their 'homes'. In the last year alone the Citizens Advice has had to help private tenants to resolve problems with poor conditions in 16,000 cases.
It is a legal responsibility of all landlords and letting agents to resolve any maintenance issue in a month or less from when the problem was reported - this is deemed a 'reasonable time' period, except when it is an emergency that must be carried out within 24 hours. If tenants have to wait any longer then a court, in most cases, will issue an order to the agent or landlord to carry out the repair or they will have to financially compensate the tenant(s).
The charity's research backs up their claim that a good percentage of private renters are afraid to ask their landlord to carry our essential repairs in fear of reprisal evictions.
The charity’ carried out a survey of more than 700 private renters in England and is now on the YouGov website. It shows show that a 'whopping' 57% who could claim compensation from their landlords, have not done so because of confrontation and the biggest fear of being evicted.
51% of respondents felt that if they continued to complain then their landlord would increase their rent.
Just 1% of tenants who could claim compensation actually took their case to court.
Citizens Advice says that increasingly tenants are taking 'the law into their own hands' as 30% have decided to carry out repairs themselves and 14% paid for work to be done out of their own pocket.
The Citizens Advice heard that one family spent £10,000 on their rented home for a number of issues which included a broken heating system, this was after they gave up complaining to their landlord who had repeatedly ignored their requests.
The charity is calling for a new body to be formed in charge of independent complaints across the UK to protect tenants against being evicted for complaining to landlords to resolve issues in their 'homes'.
According to the charity a miniscule amount of private rented homes - 0.005% - are covered by an independent scheme and it is calling for the government to make it mandatory for all landlords and letting agents to sign up to this type of scheme.
The Charity's chief executive, Gillian Guy, said: “Rent is the most expensive costs households face, but protections for renters simply don’t reflect this. The new government needs to make it easier for people to have their rights enforced when their home is in poor condition. The redress process also needs to give renters protection from retaliatory action, so they feel confident reporting a problem in their home and don’t feel like their only option is to dip into their own pocket”.
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