Tenant refusing to pay bills

brianposter

The problem here appears to be the landlord rather than the tenant - the landlord has simply not thought about how to charge appropriately when there are multiple unrelated tenants.
The obvious arrangement is that each tenant should pay one third of the electricity bill, for empty rooms are obviously the landlords, and not the tenants, responsibility.
It seems to me that an apology to the tenant and a revision of the bill is in order.

franklee

How many tenants can the property take? Is the heating completely off in all the empty bedrooms or is is kept on a low setting? Seems unfair on the lone tenant to pay for those.

The cost of heating communal areas wouldn't change much regardless of if there was one tenant or four or however many rooms. So the tenant could reasonably expect to pay only their share of that. It's hardly their fault the other rooms are empty. That's in the landlord's control as she could have lined up new tenants but it seems did not.

kydsnr, I suggest chalking this to experience and revising the tenancy agreement before anyone else moves in. Maybe find out how other HMOs are managed. Meanwhile for the current tenant you could negotiate something fairer and if they still don't pay up then S21 at the appropriate time.

[Deleted User]

Lover_of_Lycra wrote: »

I submit meter readings every month but my payments are still averaged out over 12 months. In any case all you can do is politely request that the tenant pay the whole bill if that's what you think is owed. If the tenant refuses and you can't reach an agreement then you can look at starting the eviction procedure and trying to deduct the money from the deposit. I really can't say which way it could go if the tenant decides to take this to ADR.

We will think about what the best way to go about it. We have communicated with the tenant but they are ignoring anything to do with the bill.

sevenhills wrote: »

You say this bill is £100, for only electricity. An all electric household, rather expensive for one month, you say that you take monthly readings.
I am not surprised they dont want to pay, my entire energy bill is less than £50 per month, for a house. A person might have entered the property expecting the bill to be split 4/5 ways, then because people left, the bill is theirs alone.
As the landlord in control of this, there should be a better way of doing this.

brianposter wrote: »

The problem here appears to be the landlord rather than the tenant - the landlord has simply not thought about how to charge appropriately when there are multiple unrelated tenants.
The obvious arrangement is that each tenant should pay one third of the electricity bill, for empty rooms are obviously the landlords, and not the tenants, responsibility.
It seems to me that an apology to the tenant and a revision of the bill is in order.

Yes - we communicated very clearly to the tenant that is how the electricity bill will work, that they will have to pay all if they are the only tenant, and split if they are sharing.

We have been doing this for the 5 past years, regardless of how many tenants there were (all pretty much unrelated). In those 5 years, no one has refused to pay their energy bill because of this issue. We communicated clearly that they will be responsible for the energy bill of the property, whether there are 4 of them, or 1 of them.

Usually, the energy bill amount correlates with the amount of tenants in the flatshare anyway ie. when there are 4 of them, it averages out to £50 pp. When there were only 1 of them, it still only average out to £50 pp.

So for this to happen was quite unexpected and out of nowhere - perhaps a miscommunication issue.

I do agree that the bill for that month was unusually high, and had offered to investigate whether there was an issue with the meter instead. But still met with no replies. I don't know if they decided to use a lot more that month/accidentally left the heating on/used the oven a lot more - I don't know, and is just making excuses to try and get out of paying it.

[Deleted User]

franklee wrote: »

How many tenants can the property take? Is the heating completely off in all the empty bedrooms or is is kept on a low setting? Seems unfair on the lone tenant to pay for those.

The cost of heating communal areas wouldn't change much regardless of if there was one tenant or four or however many rooms. So the tenant could reasonably expect to pay only their share of that. It's hardly their fault the other rooms are empty. That's in the landlord's control as she could have lined up new tenants but it seems did not.

kydsnr, I suggest chalking this to experience and revising the tenancy agreement before anyone else moves in. Maybe find out how other HMOs are managed. Meanwhile for the current tenant you could negotiate something fairer and if they still don't pay up then S21 at the appropriate time.

There can only be a maximum 3 tenants. Yes heating on other rooms are off. As iterated, therefore the bill should average out to roughly the same, but perhaps it is our mistake by not being clear about it to the tenant. I do see your point about it being unfair, so I will look into making the contract clearer for future use - thanks for the advice.

We have offered to split the bill in half (so they are only paying the original agreed amount pp which is 50), but they still haven't replied, so will have to figure out what to do next.

Frustrating, perhaps it is our fault, but in all our years of renting out to tenants, there has never been an issue.

brianposter

kydsnr wrote: »

We have been doing this for the 5 past years, regardless of how many tenants there were (all pretty much unrelated). In those 5 years, no one has refused to pay their energy bill because of this issue. We communicated clearly that they will be responsible for the energy bill of the property, whether there are 4 of them, or 1 of them.

Usually, the energy bill amount correlates with the amount of tenants in the flatshare anyway ie. when there are 4 of them, it averages out to £50 pp. When there were only 1 of them, it still only average out to £50 pp.

Obviously the deficiencies of your charging system will be particularly apparent when there is only one tenant and it is winter.
If you did not realize that this is an unsatisfactory charging system, you cannot really criticise the tenant for failing to understand the problem that might arise.
The bill does sound ridiculously high for a single tenant so it seems that you need, somehow, to reopen the line of communication with the tenant

paddyz

If you have a HMO it’s normally bills included, expecting one to pay bills for whole house doesn’t sound right when the person hasn’t rented the whole house

diggingdude

i think we can see now why people only stay 6 months. you have made this so complicated.

[Deleted User]

Meaningless question lol

lookstraightahead

You've obviously now come across a tenant who is looking at this properly. I'm surprised no one else has in the past.

G_M

Many good points above. You need to reconsider. Your options are


1) treat the current tenant as unreasonable and defaulting on their bills. Evict asap as per previous advice, then continue with new tenants as before and trust that the issue does not recur.


2) accept that there is a deficiency in the wording of your TA. Reach a compromise with current tenant eg split the bill with them 50/50 or some other mutually agreed %. Then re-draft your TA with the current tenant and all future tenants to a) make it clearer and b) make it fairer.