And in Other News - June 2020
Gaining Access For Essential Electrical Works
Do Student Halls Pay CIL?
New Reports from the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE)
Storing Text Message Communications From Tenants
Gaining Access For Essential Electrical Works
In our last article on the new electrical regulations (see it here) we highlighted the need for ALL rental properties to have an EICR or similar this summer. Since then, a number of landlords have experienced issues gaining access to their properties as tenants are self-isolating or shielding.
Our advice in this situations, as always, is that you should aim to meet the rules and keep all checks and certificates up to date but in instances where the tenant refuses due to isolation or distancing concerns, an audit trail needs to be kept to show that reasonable attempts have been made to gain access and perform the task and it is clearly the tenants request that it has been delayed. And with all of this in mind, no one should allow delays to extend more than 3 months beyond due date.
Do Student Halls Pay CIL?
Last month we opined about student halls not paying taxes that many assume they do - see the full article here: https://pdpla.com/news/student-halls-avoid-even-more-taxes
Since then, Cllr. Luke Stubbs has been in touch to say, " I don't think it's right to say student halls are exempt from CIL - at least not unless something has changed. The main Portsmouth city centre schemes all made a contribution based on a C1 planning usage. This is half the rate charged for housing, but is still significant. The only loophole I know of was the one applied to the Zurich Building, where the re-use of the existing structure attracted no charge because the owners said part of it was in use for storage and therefore the planning application was a conversion from one productive use to another and so exempt. "
New Reports from the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE)
CaCHE have published several new reports in the past month. One of particular interest to us, given that we have championed mediation over a long period, is their 'POLICY BRIEFING: ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO RESOLVING HOUSING DISPUTES' - find it here: https://housingevidence.ac.uk/publications/policy-briefing-alternative-approaches-to-resolving-housing-disputes/
Also new this month, they have published 'EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: PRIVATE RENTERS' HOUSING EXPERIENCES IN LIGHTLY REGULATED MARKETS' which looks at multiple countries including the UK and states, "The report examines how different groups (low and middle income households, younger and older people, families with children, students and migrants) experience the PRS and argues that there are endemic problems with affordability and insecurity that impact adversely on many tenants' well-being, health and ability to create a sense of home. Spatial inequalities are also identified, whereby the poorest tenants are increasingly concentrated in more marginal and undesirable locations, including in unconventional forms of housing such as residential caravan parks or makeshift dwellings." Find the full report here
Storing Text Message Communications From Tenants
In our article talking about 'Legal Backup' for tenant communications back in February (see it here), we mentioned Software How. Christine Wang, their writer and outreach manager has been in touch to say, "our team also published a useful guide about how to print text messages from iPhone, based on real testing. I think our guide may interest you so I'd like to invite you to check it out. You can find it here:
https://www.softwarehow.com/print-iphone-text-messages/"
Obviously most of 'In Other News' was not written by Christine Wang but she has been credited as author to allow interested members to follow up directly if needed