Bedroom too small - LA help please

QuirkyChemistry

Hi,

We have been renting a 5 bedroom house from a letting agency. However we recently found out that one of the bedrooms is not big enough to qualify as a bedroom. We have now moved out of the house and only found out this just before the end of our 9 month tenancy. We had the council round to measure and confirm this and while the inspector was there he also said that the house was in breach of numerous fire safety regulations, the freezer space was insufficient, one of the bedrooms had damp up to about waist height and there was inadequate ventilation in the bathroom. It was marketed as a 5 bed house and there were 5 of us living in it (students).

Fortunately the guy who had the small bedroom was my boyfriend and so set up a desk in my bedroom and used my room for storage as there was no space for him to work in his bedroom.

What I would like to know is if there is anything we can do? Unfortunately the letting agency has annoyed us so much with their incompetency that any way to get some form of comeback would be good. I'm sorry if that sounds bad but it's hard to phrase and they really were that awful.

Thank you for any help you can give.

clutton_2

i think if you have now moved out - you should just move on and get on with your life - you could waste endless time and energy chasing false hopes and dreams of compo and it will probably all come to nothing

use this experience to learn about better properties for next time

Loretta

When I worked for a Local Council many years ago in council properties the bedroom had to be a certain size to qualify for a bedroom, I cannot now remember the name of this and all the council tenants knew the measurements and used to keep measuring their rooms and coming to the town hall to tell us the sizes and that they wanted a bigger house. Word got round and people in private rented who wanted council houses started measuring their bedrooms and the rule did not apply to anywhere but council property. D
Some one must know about this

silvercar

judging by the size of the bedrooms in some of the newbuilds, if it can fit a bed in it its a bedroom. Even if there is no room to shut the door.

UK007BullDog

silvercar wrote: »

judging by the size of the bedrooms in some of the newbuilds, if it can fit a bed in it its a bedroom. Even if there is no room to shut the door.

:beer: :rotfl:

PasturesNew

This is clearly an HMO and there are minimum sizes laid down within that legislation.

choice of lookups: http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=hmo+%22minimum+room+sizes%22&meta=

kev_pecker

If its a student house I'm presuming the LA are going to let it to someone else?

You could always pop round, or write the new tenants a letter informing them of the problems pointed out to you.

TJ27

The minimum size for a single bedroom is six and a half square metres. That's if there is also a communal living room.

What do you mean when you wonder if there anything you can do? Was the room big enough for the nine months but then suddenly not big enough after you discovered the mimimum size or something?

As a rule of thumb, one fridge shelf per person is sufficient. This sounds to me like a HMO licensing check. Is that the case?

What is it that you're hoping for though?

red40

There is only guidance on room sizes, there is no legislation in existance that gives room sizes, mainly because all houses will have different features. The only reference to a room size is that it is 'reasonably' suitable, the good or ideal room never existed in the legislation.

The above is backed up by at least two case put before the RPT (residential property tribunal) against councils specifying room sizes when caculating numbers of people and households for the purposes of issuing a mandatory HMO licence, landlords won both appeals because councils can not set a room size, they can only give a room size as a guide and what is reasonably.

Reference to landlords association and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health where given at both hearings and their respective room sizes which was ignored because it was only a guide, many councils still use this as law, but it isn't its guidance.

Hope that Helps

Captain_Mainwaring_2

"the freezer space was insufficent"

Two points
1) Did you not see the freezer when you viewed?
2) Frozen food is no good for you, buy fresh.

neverdespairgirl

Captain_Mainwaring wrote: »

2) Frozen food is no good for you, buy fresh.

not necessarily true at all. Frozen veg is often higher in vitamins than "fresh" as it was frozen quickly.