Landlords 'earn £5.6bn a year from unsafe homes'

CLAPTON

Carl31 wrote: »

Difference of course is that you pay rent, safety checks should be part of your charge

If you own a home, you are buying something, not paying for a service

Surely if a gas safety check is vital that is it compulsory in rented property then surely it should be compulsory in owner occupiers properties
Are the children of OO less important than the children of renters.

CLAPTON

cepheus wrote: »

See also

The great housing benefit scandal

Nine billion pounds of taxpayers' money goes to private landlords every year in housing benefit. And the Institute for Public Policy Research estimates that at least £3bn of that money is spent on poor quality accommodation annually. That's a lot of public money. And some private landlords are getting rich at our expense while, in some areas, 70% of privately rented homes don't meet the government's decent homes standard.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32381471

what percentage of owner occupier homes don't meet the government decent homes standard.


does anyone know what the government's decent home standard is?

lostinrates

CLAPTON wrote: »

Surely if a gas safety check is vital that is it compulsory in rented property then surely it should be compulsory in owner occupiers properties
Are the children of OO less important than the children of renters.

Ahh, thank goodness. We're adults in a no children household. None of us matter.

antrobus

CLAPTON wrote: »

what percentage of owner occupier homes don't meet the government decent homes standard.....

20.3% in 2012. Compared to 33.1% in the privated rented sector, 16.3% for LA homes, and 14.3% for HA homes.

P.S. That claim that "70% of privately rented homes don't meet the government's decent homes standard" looks very, very wrong to me.

See Chapter 3 of the English Housing Survey

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-housing-survey-2012-profile-of-english-housing-report

CLAPTON wrote: »

...does anyone know what the government's decent home standard is?

It's something like, it's a decent home if it does not feature a Category 1 hazard, isn't in disrepair, and offers a reasonable degree of 'thermal comfort'.

antrobus

SeduLOUs wrote: »

...I'd be interested to see how the 'unsafe homes' figures for rentals compares to homes that are owner occupied. It probably wouldn't seem anywhere near as exciting a figure.

I can answer that one too.:)

In 2012, the EHS has 19% of private rented homes with a Cat 1 defect, compared to 14% of owner occupied homes.

antrobus

cepheus wrote: »

Landlords are making profit from undermining safety! Good job their mates in government will support and protect them from prosecution. They must of breathed a great sigh of relief on May 8th. …

Why?

The law hasn't changed. Landlords still have a legal obligation to maintain their properties to the defined standard. LAs are (as we speak) issuing (or threatening to issue) improvement notices.

There has been a "marked decrease in the prevalence of any Category 1 hazards" in recent years. Down from 23% in 2008 to 14% in 2012. "Improvement was evident for all tenures". Things are getting better. Why is this a problem?

stator

mayonnaise wrote: »

Based on what?

Personal experience obviously

mayonnaise

stator wrote: »

Personal experience obviously

You came up with a nationwide % based on personal experience.

Okay! :rotfl:

CLAPTON

Presumably, one can assume that some of our most expensive and desirable properties would fail the decent housing test?

jamesd

So lets look into a bit of the truth here. The real underlying survey is the English Housing Survey, commissioned each year by the Department for Communities and Local Government. Citizen's Advice commissioned a report to analyse data from that survey and did not do their own survey.

The EHS checked "over" 6,000 privately rented homes. The CAB numbers are based on projecting the findings of those checks to the whole housing stock of the country.

So lets look at the BBC story and the "present a severe threat to tenants' health from problems like damp and rat infestations" in it.

The words "rat" and "infestation" do not appear at all in the report, nor do their plurals. The study is specific that damp "is not a requirement of the decency standard" but severe damp is in about 350,000 homes so its mention will alarm people unnecessarily.