Housing De-regulation Bill 2015

Housing De-regulation Bill.

The changes meant it may not be possible to evict a tenant within 6 months’ of the tenant complaining about the condition of the property. We think this could include any unresolved maintenance issue. There are 12 pages of the Deregulation Bill on the changes. On this specific issue they say a Section 21 notice to gain possession of a property may not be valid if served within six months of a tenant’s written complaint about the condition of a property and where the landlord had not given an “adequate response” within 14 days. Given Section 21 notices are the usual means of gaining possession of a property, this is an important issue. The Bill also prevents evicting a tenant if there is no valid Gas Safety Certificate or Energy Performance Certificate, and also stipulates various changes in tenancy documentation. The Bill should get Royal Assent before the election. If so it is likely to come into effect later this year, maybe October.

What you should know

If your tenants raise a property management issue we suggest it is prudent to assume it could be considered a complaint about the condition of the property. Given email and text is so commonly used, it is prudent to assume any property management report is a complaint in writing. If tenants do not have a copy of a valid Gas Safety Certificate and Energy Performance Certificate then it will not be possible to serve a Section 21 notice to gain possession of the property. There are a range of detailed changes about what information gets included in various communications with tenants. Without these being followed it may not be possible to gain possession of the property.

What do you need to do – Nothing if we manage your property

Where we manage any maintenance issues we keep clear records of all there progress, we would always talk to you about getting any work done and we aim to get things resolved quickly. In future if it has not been possible for any landlord to let us know work should go ahead, we may arrange the work on their behalf to prevent any delay and exposing any them to risk. Obviously if you do not use us to manage your property, then we hope you decide it is time you should and get in touch with us. There are a number of changes in the rental sector currently. We are checking details on changes about smoke and carbon monoxide alarms which we will cover in another post.