Shared Accommodation

Bunnie1982

I am asking on behalf of a friend so naturally some of the information is a bit vague and I am only getting one side of things.

She lives in a shared house with 6 other girls, moved in March this year.

She has mentioned to me that the landlady goes in the house every day and cleans....she throws away food in the fridge and moves stuff around the house.

They have to pay £4 every week towards toilet roll and washing up liquid.

They have to pay to use the tumble drier, there is a meter on that is £1 for 20 mins. They haven't got a garden to put washing out on a line.

Also apparently the landlady has put a chain and padlock over the heating thing (whatever a heating thing is)

My main questions are:

Should the deposit be protected? I wasn't sure if this applies to shared accommodation

Is there anyway they can negotiate with the landlady so that they buy their own washing up liquid and toilet tolls? Surely this would be more money saving?

There is nothing in the contract about having to give her this money for washing up liquid and toilet roll, and nothing about the landlady going round every day.

It has been years since I lived in a shared house so I don't know what laws and stuff apply now, would be very grateful for some information. Thanks

morg_monster

I assume the landlady doesn't live in the house.
If this is the case, the tenants have an entitlement to quiet enjoyment of the home, regardless of sharing etc or not. This means really she has to give 24 hours notice of each visit and they can request a time when there is someone in the house.
leaving everything else aside, this coming and going from the house at her own whim is basically ridiculous, illegal behaviour on the landlady's part. I know other people here know the relevant legal stuff like the back of their hands so I'll leave the rest to them.

The tumble dryer and £4 a week is just odd....

melancholly

sounds very odd - my advice would be for her to look for somewhere else to live! if 5 other people in the house are happy to go along with this kind of an invasion of privacy, it may not be worth fighting it....

Bunnie1982

The landlady doesn't live in the house.

I thought the tumble dryer and £4 a week was odd as well, but like I said it has been years since I lived in shared accommodation so things may well have changed.

melancholly

i'm in a shared house and that really is very odd! i certainly would not tolerate the LL coming and going as she pleased and going through my food! i would guess that the LL isn't up to date on their obligations and therefore will not have protected the deposit. the house will probably also be a HMO and therefore the LL will most likely need a license and must have certain minimum standards.... unless this house is a lot cheaper than everything else in the area, i'd say that your friend should just move somewhere else. alarm bells are ringing all over hte place

useful websites:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/rentingandletting/privaterenting/housesmultiple/
http://england.shelter.org.uk/advice/advice-3180.cfm

PasturesNew

This all sounds like the way a lot of houses would have been a number of years back.

Although I've no idea how this model works in today's legislation.

All of her behaviour doesn't sound unusual to me, but I've known people renting places like this going back to the 70s.

The role she's in is like an owner with lodgers who is making sure the heating's not left on all the time and there's enough loo roll/washing up liquid. The question is whether that's legal these days.

She seems to be straddling the rights etc of owner with lodger and AST.

She's probably got NO idea that anything she is doing is likely to be deemed unacceptable.

This requires looking into in detail in order to come to a conclusion over what's right or wrong because it depends the the agreements signed. What sort are they etc.

As recent as 2000/2001 I was living in a big old house with 6 separate self-contained bedsits, sharing 2 bathrooms. The owner's son had the whole, separate, ground floor; the landlady/husband lived across the road. She was always in and out of the house in general - and one of the bedsits she'd let herself into to access the eaves (without saying a word). She'd let herself into all the bedsits without any notice to empty the electricity meters. And I came home one day to find my door wide open and a bloke in overalls glossing my front door.

I've been wondering if she'd changed her ways with laws tightening all the time these days.

tbs624

Bunnie - this is one for the local Council's Tenancy Relations Officer (based in the housing Dept and deals entirely with private rentals).

This LL appears to be locked in a time-warp, as other posters have said, and that being the case, it's likely that she's not complying with a whole raft of current LL & T legislation: HMO licensing and appropriate sanitation facilities for that number of tenants, Gas safety certificates, deposits etc all need checking out.

Your friend needs to ask for an urgent advice interview with the TRO and take a copy of her contract & any other relevant papers with her. Are any of the other tenants concerned?

zebulon

£24 of loo rolls per week :rotfl: that she probably gets from Lidl...