Do you understand safety as a landlord?
As a landlord you are responsable for providing your tenant with a safe and healthy property for their enjoyment.
Check the links at the bottom of the page
Read the governments Housing Health and Safety Rating System (click here)
The law requires you to record your safety regime if you employ more than four people in your business, that includes yourself and partners, full time, part time, tempory, or casual workers. If you employ less than four then you don't have to record your safety regime. If you decide that you fall into the latter catagory and a lot of new landlords do! and you decide not to record your health and safety regime, you are walking into a mine field hands over your ears just waiting for the 'BIG BANG'
You could be called upon in a court of law to prove that you took all reasonable precautions (did everything reasonably practicable is the terminology) to ensure that the property you let to your tennant was safe in all respects. How would you do that? You can only prove your efforts in your safety regime if you have it on an audit trail, otherwise known as a paper record!!!
Word of mouth that you did everything you should as far as health and safety is concerned, has very little standing in a court of law.
"Proof of the pudding springs to mind"
You will also be legally bound by the normal all-encompassing laws of the land. This includes:
- The law of tort - negligence and personal injury.
- Criminal law.
We are all bound by the above two laws even if you are not a property investor.(see example below)
The Law of Tort
Even though you may have all the safety records in place you still owe a duty of care to your tenant and anyone that enters your property. If it can be shown that you were negligent in any way then you could be sued and ordered to pay damages.
As a landlord you are liable for any damages if all of these conditions are satisfied:
A.) Your tenant or anyone entering your investment property were to suffer an injury; and
B.) You owed a duty of care to the person entering your investment property who suffered the personal injury; and
C.) You breached that duty of care.
So for example if John, the landlord, failed to fix the cooker socket in the kitchen within a reasonable time and the tenant's guest, Annette, suffered an electric shock or burn, then John would be liable to compensate Annette for her injury.
This is because:
1.) Annette suffered injury;
2.) John owed a duty of care as it is realistically expected that a tenant would invite a guest into their property;
3.) John breached that duty of care, as he did not fix the socket within a reasonable time (24hrs for high risk items) when asked to by the tenant.
Criminal Law
Even if your tenant hasn't paid you any rent for two months you cannot ignore their requests for maintenance or ‘send the boys round'. Threatening your tenant or being violent to your tenant because they haven,t paid you any rent is no justification for your behaviour in the eyes of the law.
Investing in property can sometimes challenge your ability to remain calm and situations can become quite heated. You have to be a responsible person and realise that if you want to build a property portfolio seriously, then you have to act lawfully in every way.
For FREE Health and Safety ADVICE. click here
Landlord and Tenant issues, Prison Term for landlord. click here