Unfurnished rental & broken cooker

tgon

My son has just rented an unfurnished house that, when viewing and signing up, had an electric cooker in-situ. He tried the cooker tonight and it dosent work. When he rang the landlord they said the cooker was not part of the deal and he would have to remove it and buy his own.

I guess what he saw was assumed to be part of the agreement as it would be unusual to have a broken appliance wired in when presenting the house for rent. Do cookers normally come part of a rented property? Has he any recourse? Thx

Fire_Fox

Was the cooker mentioned in the letting agents particulars?

Lavendyr

Was the cooker on the inventory when he moved in? If so, it should be functioning and I believe there is something about a landlord having a duty to maintain a functioning means of preparing hot food, if one was explicitly provided with the tenancy (I may be wrong).

If he does end up providing his own, he should store the old one if possible/convenient, so he can leave it when he gives up the tenancy.

tgon

Thanks everyone. There's no mention of white goods in the agreement or the cooker. My son should have been a little wiser - lesson learnt.

Yorkie1

He will need to leave a cooker at the end of the tenancy so either he stores the existing one in a dry place somewhere if possible, or he gets a cheap / second hand one so he doesn't lose out financially too much at the end of the tenancy.

He only needs to replace it with one of a similar quality / age as the LL isn't entitled to 'betterment'.

Might be worth double checking how the cooker is plugged or wired into the mains. If it's hard wired then he doesn't want to be paying for a sparky twice to unwire and then rewire it!

Finally, has he considered getting a quote to repair it - or is it definitely destined for the scrap yard?

Edit: double finally, if the LL says the cooker is not part of the deal, is it on the inventory? If not, and he gets the LL to confirm in writing that the cooker is not part of the letting, then he could probably just take any new cooker with him at the end. LL can't have cake and eat it (to mix a cooking metaphor!)

Davesnave

If no part of the cooker is working, it's possible, and indeed likely, that the problem lies in the wiring. It could be as simple as a trip switch activating, or something far more complex.

Few people would need a sparky to hard wire a cooker, as by law there must be an isolating switch for the wire which attaches it to the supply circuit.