No shower for 5 months and counting - Compensation

Kerri.fear

Ok, so we've not been allowed to use our shower since early November 2017. It's not Mid-March 2018.
They've not actually confirmed what the problem is, but the general consensus is that the grout is damaged and has leaked badly under the bath, rotted the floor and has been leaking into the neighbours' bedroom. Here's a list of things that have happened:

• We report the problem early November 2017
• Landlord agrees to fix the problem and talks to property maintenance
• A month passes, we've not heard from either of them. Landlord responds to our messages with "He's on it" basically.
• Have plumbers over to check problem, they remove the baseboard from the bath revealing a rotten one underneath. It was obviously covered up before we moved in. Also discovered this was a problem that started with the last tenants (Neighbour told us).
• Months go by with no clear answer on what the problem is, who is responsible or any timings for when it will be fixed. In the meantime we're having baths every other night, using loads of water (and it takes 25 mins to run a decent depth bath).
• February comes around and we're given a date for the work after calling property maintenance and insurance directly ourselves.
• Nobody turns up on the day the work was meant to start, my housemate had it booked off work.
• The insurance company tell us they didn't realise how bad the damage was, so needed to re-quote (They had already sent 3 people around 3 different times in the last 3 months)
• Landlord gets involved with insurance, gives them our number to arrange somewhere to live with work is happening.
• My housemate receives a call from a company which puts people into temporary accommodation when work is being done in their flat. She has the wrong landlord and letting agent details and thought we were planning to be out of the flat for 3 months (we were told 3 days originally?)

It's been such a long time dealing with this. We just want to know if there's anything we can do to either claim back a part of our rent as we've not been able to use 1 room of our flat properly for almost 5 months (plus our water bill is going to be massive now). We would have never rented the place if we knew the shower didn't work.
Our letting agency was only used to find our landlord tenants and to create the tenancy agreement. Everything else goes through the landlord now.

We have no idea where we stand as generally online if we have a working bath apparently we're not entitled to anything else. Which is mad, because if I buy a pair of jeans that were sold with 2 pockets, and it had 1 pocket. I could get a refund. Why do tenants have no rights with renting?

Amanda_Cm

5 months? Do you even have place to take showers? I will be out after maximum a month!

Norman_Castle

claim back a part of our rent as we've not been able to use 1 room of our flat properly

You've not been able to use the shower, the room and bath has been fine.
Shower curtains on string would allow you to use the shower.

freeisgood

This sort of thing has come up before, as you have a means to wash it is all they need to supply....have you considered a hand-held shower attachment that fits onto taps. You would have to sit down for your in-bath shower though! But would save water.

AdrianC

You have facilities for washing. Your landlord's legal responsibilities are met.

The key question here is would it have been fixed faster if it was owner-occupied? And the answer seems to be no, because it's in the hands of the freeholder's management company and the insurers.

Are you in a fixed period tenancy? When does it expire? Have you talked to the landlord about mutually agreeing to end the tenancy? You draw parallels with returning faulty goods - well, the equivalent here is moving out.

ProDave

The fact is though, to repair this PROPERLY the bath has to come out, the floor and wall repaired then bath back, re tile etc.

Obviously that would make the bathroom unusable. So perhaps the LL is just waiting for the next void between tenants as any other "fix" will be a short term bodge again.

As already noted, if you put put up a shower curtain against the tiled wall, you could use the shower without the tiles even getting wet. Just buy one with one of those spring loaded poles so you don't have to drill holes to fit it.