House of Multiple occupancy question

Soundgirlrocks

Hi All,
I live in a HMO in a very large Victorian house. The landlady lives on the ground floor and some of the first with her family (Five then they are all back from Uni etc) The tenants live on the rest of the first and second floors (7 of us in total 2 couples and 3 singles) we have a shared kitchen living room and two bathrooms for the tenants and have a door separating our accommodation from downstairs ( although to enter the property we go through the family’s hallway. I have been there for nearly 5 years and have been very happy and have a good relationship with my landlady, HOWEVER she is very scatty when it comes to paper work I have scribbled note which is my contract (out of date as I have moved into a larger room and now live with my partner) which is more than most of the tenants have. The other couple have been asked to pay their rent in cash ( I suspect this is because she is not declaring this income and is not allowed 7 tenants upstairs) I don’t think she has protected our deposits in the relevant schemes. One of the tenants is moving out and she is demanding 6 weeks’ notice he can’t find his scrap of paper. There are several things which need attention in the tenants accommodation but I have a feeling there is little we can do to get her to sort them out

My questions are:

What notice should my house mate give?
What can I do to get her to protect out deposits?
Can she refuse to accept rent as a standing order?
What legal protection do we have as HMO? ( I assume that it is similar to that of lodgers?)

How can I persuade her to do things properly?

I do not want to fall out with her and as I said we have a good relationship but I am fed up of the shoddy way things are done. We will be moving out ourselves in a few months and want to make it as pain free as possible, I also want to make sure that my landlady is protected as I think she is leaving herself open to problems with any new tenants

Sorry for the length of the post any adive particularly on the legal side of things would be much appreciated

BitterAndTwisted

If you're moving out in a few months why should it matter? If you're not confident that you will get your deposit back just don't pay the last month's rent. Ditto your outgoing house-mate.

Your landlord's tax-affairs really aren't any of your business and she can demand payment by any method she likes.

Soundgirlrocks

Thanks for the reply. I don't want to do a runner and not pay the last months rent as it would be unpleasent as we live in the same property and would be carring our stuff out through the landladys hall into a remove van! I also get on well with both the landlady and her husband, and will probably keep in touch after we move out. I just want to make her see it's important to do things properly! not just for new tenants but for her as well

BitterAndTwisted

In that case you should advise your landlady to join a landlords association or point her in the direction of this site and more particularly the LandlordZone one. Most of the information she needs can be found on LLZone although the definition of an HMO differs from Local Authority to Local Authority and so do the requirements. It's not really clear to me but this property could possibly not be defined an an HMO and all of you sharers could just be lodgers rather than tenants, especially if there are shared facilities like bathrooms and kitchens.

Soundgirlrocks

We are HMO we have had a council inspection (after a small chimney fire- fire brigade notified the council that the fire alarm system didn't work!) and a licence is laminated and pinned to the wall ( only for 5 not 7) not that the council noticed there were too many of us living there (we are all on the electoral roll) The kitchen and bathrooms are for the tenants use only.

I will try and get her to look at the Landlordzone, thanks