A kit explaining how homes to let can be made more secure and legally-compliant has been launched by the Residential Landlords Association.
Its 'Safe and Secure' tool kit provides users with a single website featuring an interactive picture of a house which, when clicked on, provides easy to understand information on how landlords or agents can meet the legal standards required of them.
Advice includes how best to ensure gas, electrical and fire safety as well as information on how to prevent damp and mould; improving the energy efficiency of a property and how to prevent trips and falls around the house.
Each part of the house, when clicked on, provides details of the legal requirements for a landlord and information on the likely cost of fitting safety features such as window safety locks; carbon monoxide detectors; and fire alarms.
It also includes a simple, easy to understand check list about features a landlord should check regularly to ensure that the homes they rent out are safe, legal and secure.
According to the most recent English Housing Survey, 16 per cent of private rented sector properties have at least one hazard that means the home fails the minimum safety standards expected of them.
“The reality is that there a large number of legal requirements expected of rented homes. The problem is not a lack of law but of enforcing these requirements and ensuring landlords understand the complexities of renting homes out” explains Alan Ward, chairman of the RLA.
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It looks like a great idea, can't seem to open it or find out when/how to do this on RLA site. Anyone know?
http://www.rla.org.uk/landlord/safe-and-secure/
Yes, great idea. Hopefully this will be another way of limiting the activities of rogue landlords. If there is clear information and advice on how to keep a property secure and habitable, there can be no excuses when landlords don't adhere to this.
A tad patronising in my view. It assumes that most landlords don't know what they're doing and need their hands held. There is already plenty of legal, safety and property maintenance information out there if you took the time to look. All sorts of websites, blogs, articles, etc.
Good for first-time landlords, I suppose, but it strikes me as a bit too much like nannying.
Surely these safety measures should be a given, but for first-time landlords it could be a helpful tool. Will be interesting to see whether this has an impact on the amount of properties with hazards.
I think we shout go harder with this safety measures!
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