Am I entitled to compensation: Boiler repeatedly not working in shared building

andyace93

Hi,

I currently rent from an agency who manage everything for the landlord. I'm in a serviced building (high rise with 400 flats in) and there is a centralised boiler system. The rent is currently £1750 a month.

Over the last month and a half we have had almost 2 weeks of no hot water and a 72 hour period of no running water cold or hot. This has been caused according to the buildings facilities team by different problems and the hot water is usually out for 24 hour periods at a time rather than being continuous. As soon as there is a problem engineers are called out which is why this usually gets fixed after 24 hours.

Is there any legal basis for Landlords to provide any compensation or them proactively arranging facilities for a shower etc as this has become a frequent issue?

Thanks,
Andy

AdrianC

What could your landlord have done better/faster?

Lunchbox

We’ve had similar issues. Hot water being out for around 24 hours at a time isn’t unreasonable, but I would be asking for an explanation of why so many outages and how they’re working to prevent it happening again. You can’t expect compensation or provisions for showers etc. unless this is being offered to the landlord by the freeholder.

No running water at all is a different matter and I’m interested to know what the obligations of a freeholder are. Water companies do have obligations; https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/water/water-supply/interruptions-to-your-water-supply/interruptions-to-your-water-supply/. We’ve been left without running/drinking water for over 24 hours due to pump issues and no provisions were put in place by our freeholder. With almost 500 properties involved, the local supermarket supplies of bottled water were quickly exhausted.

G_M

As long as the landlord is doing all he can reasonably be expected to do, what more do you expect?
Have you written to im informing him of the facts? If not, how can he query the freeholders /managemnet company?


If you have, it seems the freeholder/manco are reasonably responsive to faults, and get them fixed. But yes, a question from the leaseholders (your landlord and others- have you spoken to other leaseholders in the block?) regarding the repetitive nature of the faults would be fair.

theartfullodger

Compo .........


The prudent landlord does not provide compo. She makes a "gesture of goodwill".