Lolly
06-06-2005, 14:35 PM
Hi,
My partner and I rent a flat from a private landlord. They are old, very bad tempered and obviously have read up on their rights as landlords as they are hugely evasive to anything we try to discuss with them in that respect.
We have had a couple of incidents with the man of the house entering our flat without our prior permission to fix a leaky tap, a faulty storage heater etc. Resulting on one occassion in me coming home from work late one night to realise that someone had been into our flat and had left a complete mess of the bathroom.
We have had totally inadequate heating whereby for the first three months in the property, we had to endure the most horrific damp and mould on both the walls, our clothes and carpets. They would accept no responsibility for this but once I looked into it, realised that we needed more heaters (they only gave us two storage heaters for a 3 bedroom flat!). We had to buy the heaters ourselves.
MORE IMPORTANTLY; On Friday morning just gone, I realised we had no hot water. We run on electrical hot water from the boiler in the kitchen. I opened the boiler cupboard door where we also keep our towels and bed linen to find the electical socket had burnt out and only narrowly missed setting the towels, cupboard and possibly the entire flat on fire and thus killing us! The contents of the cupboard had a horrid fishy, burnt smell of burnt plastic and wires.
When we told the landlord, he said that he couldn't possibly get an electrician around to fix on a Saturday and that he was too busy himself to look at it until Monday morning. We spent four days without hot water. He came in this morning in a very rude fashion and has set about replacing the switch, part of the boiler and goodness knows what else on his own!! I don't think he's a qualified electrician and I am worried that the work he's carrying out is not up to the Electrical Safety Standards of 94. He is approximately 80 years old and the most bad tempered and rude man we have ever encountered. We try our very best to be overly polite and chatty but we are met with abrupt rudeness at every turn.
He is always doing things on the cheap and I worry that our lives might be put at risk with the handwork of this old chap. Where do we stand legally???
Many thanks for any input anyone can give.
Thanks,
Lolly
My partner and I rent a flat from a private landlord. They are old, very bad tempered and obviously have read up on their rights as landlords as they are hugely evasive to anything we try to discuss with them in that respect.
We have had a couple of incidents with the man of the house entering our flat without our prior permission to fix a leaky tap, a faulty storage heater etc. Resulting on one occassion in me coming home from work late one night to realise that someone had been into our flat and had left a complete mess of the bathroom.
We have had totally inadequate heating whereby for the first three months in the property, we had to endure the most horrific damp and mould on both the walls, our clothes and carpets. They would accept no responsibility for this but once I looked into it, realised that we needed more heaters (they only gave us two storage heaters for a 3 bedroom flat!). We had to buy the heaters ourselves.
MORE IMPORTANTLY; On Friday morning just gone, I realised we had no hot water. We run on electrical hot water from the boiler in the kitchen. I opened the boiler cupboard door where we also keep our towels and bed linen to find the electical socket had burnt out and only narrowly missed setting the towels, cupboard and possibly the entire flat on fire and thus killing us! The contents of the cupboard had a horrid fishy, burnt smell of burnt plastic and wires.
When we told the landlord, he said that he couldn't possibly get an electrician around to fix on a Saturday and that he was too busy himself to look at it until Monday morning. We spent four days without hot water. He came in this morning in a very rude fashion and has set about replacing the switch, part of the boiler and goodness knows what else on his own!! I don't think he's a qualified electrician and I am worried that the work he's carrying out is not up to the Electrical Safety Standards of 94. He is approximately 80 years old and the most bad tempered and rude man we have ever encountered. We try our very best to be overly polite and chatty but we are met with abrupt rudeness at every turn.
He is always doing things on the cheap and I worry that our lives might be put at risk with the handwork of this old chap. Where do we stand legally???
Many thanks for any input anyone can give.
Thanks,
Lolly