Rented accomodation for students - Their rights?

See if the student union has a housing advice person or the council.

All furnishings have to be set standards. Have a look on Liverpool council's website.

Please tell me why bare plaster walls are a Heath and safety risk? Newly plastered walls can't always be painted straight away.

The students should ask the agent when the landlord intends to complete the work and consider asking for compensation if the use of the kitchen is disrupted by any activity that prevents them from using it.

Is there something that is physically preventing the students put the packaging in the bin? Is there any difficulty they are experiencing in getting in contact with the landlord through the agent to ask them when they plan to finish this work off and uplift the rubbish?

Can't one of the 7 students ask the landlord to get the workmen or council to uplift the rubbish or ask permission to arrange it themselves (usually a quick phone call to the council or online form to arrange collection)?

It's not ideal, these things are the responsibility of the landlord to resolve, perhaps he encountered unreliable workmen, but most of the issues you raise seem a relatively simple for people studying a degree to find out their rights and resolve it rather than getting one of their parents to do this for them.

The local council will have an environmental health department that will undertake Health and Safety assessments of properties - you can find out the hazards that they look for by searching for the info online- they tend to be around gas safety, unsafe wiring, missing bannisters, damp/mould, lack of heating/hot water and not around the poor or late finish of a kitchen refurb.

Again, I recommend diplomatic enquiries to the landlord to get an idea of what is being done to fix the issues rather than calling in the council straight off.

Mr_Warren wrote: »

Thank you all but this last one sounds very much emotional reply and not objective.....Would you happen to be a landlord yourself?

I have been in touch with Environmental Health who confirmed the following:

Rubbish have to be cleared IMMEDIATELY by landlord or his/her agent and am asking why should the kids do it themselves?

As parents paying the costs of the rental, you damn right i am going to get involved. The kids got in touch with the agent and only received promises in exchange.

The bare plaster in a communal area is against the EH rules concerning food preparation areas and/or surfaces. It might be ok in your own house with your own family but as soon as lodgers are concerned, they have to be able to clean the surfaces and walls. Therefore walls have to be tiled IMMEDIATELY.

All beddings and furnitures have to carry the "fire retardant" label, so the landlord will have to go shopping fast.

Alert the landlord/agency that you will get the council to do an inspection. We called the council when we had issues with our property during university and because they did not rectify about £500 worth of (safety not cosmetic, we would have sorted those) problems it ended up costing £30,000 as every ceiling needed replastering for fire safety, every door replacing, divisions created between the downstairs kitchen and bathroom etc, a wall built between the stairs and hallway (bannister unsafe) new bannister put on, new fire alarms throughout, new kitchen surfaces, etc etc. Although this was not our intention, we needed certain safety precautions to be taken e.g. toxic mould removed and painted over. We were not being too picky, lol.

As much as student properties are not meant to be luxury, we did expect safety. Sadly because they did not sort out problems which were making the property unsafe with just polite requests they ended up having to conform to every new rule and regulation e.g. I did not particularly care for a fire door, I liked the traditional pine door I already had, but this was technically ''unsafe'' and needed new locks, fire shutters etc. To sort out a few problems amicably saves them money and the tenants time.

Be very wary of getting too involved as a parent as one of our groups fathers was so pushy and rude to everyone that they were removed from our house group on a tenancy technicality (obviously deposit returned etc) landlord did not want them there and the pushy and threatening approach of the father left us refusing to live with them. Students really should be old enough to sort out their own housing issues and you do not want to alienate your son/daughter from peers.