Fire in next door flat, we have no electricity. What are our rights?

wadewadewade

Hi all,

Brief background: I am one of four tenants in a flatshare in London. We rent one of four flats, in a converted terrace house, from a private landlord (who himself owns leasehold). We have a good relationship with our landlord thus far and he has always been very responsive.

Now, the story. It's a bit of a read, but I want to give the full scope of it and make sure I don't miss too much out.

A month or 2 ago, renovation works started on the outside of the property, paid for jointly by the various leaseholders & property freeholder. As I've recently found out, the landlords of the 8 flats the work is being done on are split into 2 groups - with our landlord and another on the side of "been putting it off because they don't want to pay" and 2 or 3 others on the "this work needs doing" side. Explaining the whole situation would read like a bad soap opera, so I'll leave that out.

A few weeks ago, the lighting in our flat started going funny (bright, then dark, then bright etc.) and the fuse in the boiler blew. We called the landlord, he came round the same day with an electrician, replaced the fuse and had a quick look to find the source of the lighting problem. He found nothing. Fine, fair enough.

Sunday night, the lights start going funny again. I sent an email to the landlord. On Monday morning, we discover this blew the fuse in the boiler again, so at midday I give the landlord a call who says he'll be round either later that day or tomorrow. Monday evening, the lights start going crazy, quickly followed by all the electrics in the flat. Lights turning off & on, the oven being turned on past 180 would turn the kitchen lights off. We switch everything off & call the landlord, who says he'll be round that night. I knocked on a few neighbours' doors to find out if they're also having troubles - the first flat isn't, the second flat doesn't answer so I drop a note through their letterbox.

Five minutes later, there's a knock at the door. "Oh, that must be flat 9 who've seen my note" - nope, it's the lady from number 3 who kindly but nervously informs us that she thinks flat 1 (next door, basement level) is on fire.

Fire brigade come along, put the fire out, nobody hurt (nobody was in). Turns out it was their internet box catching on fire due to - yep - an electrical surge. Electrical board arrive and have a look at the main switchboard(?) for the eight flats (our four plus the four next door). Turns out the builders I mentioned above had plugged straight into that and as a result burnt out the 100a fuse and the neutral wire, meaning that each flat had two live wires and 440v going into it. That explained a lot. Off goes the power to all eight flats.

For various reasons that aren't worth explaining, the power was eventually restored at 1am last (Wednesday) night/Thursday morning, which is my excuse for any rambling in this post! However, in the meantime, we've discovered that the power surges, almost certainly attributable to the builders, have damaged a number of electrical items. I haven't had chance to go round and swap out every fuse in every plug, but almost all the lights are blown, chargers are damaged and I haven't dared to touch the TV.

Now, onto my questions:

• Does having no electricity (& no hot water) make the property "uninhabitable"?
• If so, is this from Sunday or Monday? I'm leaning towards Monday on this.
• What are our legal rights in terms of compensation/rent reduction? I had a read of this but there wasn't any mention of concrete figures - is the standard just for the few days the property has had no electrics? Back-of-a-fag-packet calculations show this would be about £300 off, which seems nowhere near the value of inconvenience caused for four people.
• I believe we had the "right" to stay in a hotel - as we haven't exercised this right, does this put us in a better position with the landlord?
• I had a quick flick through the tenancy agreement this morning but nothing about keeping the property habitable jumped out at me. Is this a legal right even if it's not included in the contract?
• Who should we chase for any money owed for replacing equipment?
• Who is ultimately responsible? Insurance? The builders? Our landlord? Us?
• As an aside, I noticed that the dates on the AST are from 29/4/13 to 28/4/13 - could we use this as a last resort? From my brief time studying contract law some years ago, I don't think so

Apologies for the wall of text but I did want to be thorough - if there are any points that would help if I expanded on them, let me know. I'm also running on 4 hours sleep, so excuse any bits that don't make perfect sense.

Summary: fire, probably caused by builders poor electrical supply, cuases us to lose power for three/four days and damages some equipment through surging. What are our rights & who do we pursue for "compensation"?

RAS

Hi

Looks like the builders insurance are going to be responsible for the costs of the fire and the damage to all the other flats + any equipment. Certainly this is what happened when the builders on property near me caused a fire. However it took a long time to sort out as the damage was extensive.

Think you need to get hold of your local tenancy relations officer and Shelter for advice. Maybe ask Environmental Health as well.

WellKnownSid

I'm very surprised that any half-awake electrician wouldn't immediately have recognised the symptoms you describe in paragraph 4 as it's such an bleedin' obvious fault...

wadewadewade

RAS wrote: »

Looks like the builders insurance are going to be responsible for the costs of the fire and the damage to all the other flats + any equipment. Certainly this is what happened when the builders on property near me caused a fire. However it took a long time to sort out as the damage was extensive.

That's what I thought. The damage to our flat isn't too bad (appliances only, like I said) but the flat that was on fire is, predictably, heavily damaged. I imagine their insurers will deal with the claims from this incident in one go...

WellKnownSid wrote: »

I'm very surprised that any half-awake electrician wouldn't immediately have recognised the symptoms you describe in paragraph 4 as it's such an bleedin' obvious fault...

Quite - he was not the electrician brought round the second time!

Any ideas on the rent reduction?

Werdnal

First step would be to speak to the EHO for advice. Only they can officially declare a property uninhabitable, and if they do, your LL is responsible for providing (or funding) alternative accommodation until such time as your's is fit to move back into.

He would then obviously make a claim for his losses from the insurance of the guilty party.

If you have lost personal appliances, you should also be making a claim for the insurers covering whoever was at fault - if you have your own contents cover, you can probably claim from them and they in turn would counter claim from the other parties insurance. Do you now if any assessors have visited the fire damaged property yet? You need to find out who they are an get your claim for your own personal property sorted.

Yorkie1

You've written that the fire happened on Monday evening, and the electricity was restored just over 48 hours later on early Thursday morning - is that right?

Has the fire otherwise made the flat not possible to live in, or was it just the electricity - are you back in the flat now?

On your final question, I very much doubt that a single digit typo will enable you get out of your contract, particularly if the contract states the duration of the tenancy e.g. 12 months elsewhere.