Rent and tenancy

I would like to share a situation that my friend is undergoing.

Recently she was issued a section 13 notice and she felt compelled to sign a 8 month contract with the new rent.

She now is going through a family emergency and would like to get out of the contract. She is currently staying with her dad as she has to look after him and situation is seeming to not get better .

She recently went back to her own rental property to collect a few things and by mistake kept the toilet light on pf her ensuite. Another tenant her flatmate of hers complained to the landlord that the noise of the light is bothering him. She didn't do this unintentionally. She is just under so much pressure ..she just simply forgot.

So the landlord is now threatening to install room monitors to monitor energy usage for every room . My friend and all her flatmates are paying an increased an rent anyway . And now the landlord wants to charge for extra usage on top of that.

Isn't he being unreasonable? Can he do that? Is int this a threate?

Reply 1

Zarek

I would get some legal advice here from a Law Centre or citizen advice. Getting out of a signed contract is not so easy and she would need to have some legitimate grounds. The energy use is a separate issue really and probably depends on what the contract says about paying the bills. If it requires a contractual change she can object to it and perhaps get out of the let that way. In any events installing separate meters isn’t likely to be quick, maybe not in the timescale of the 8 month agreement

Reply 2

Kutie Karen

What is a section 13? How much longer to go on the contract? Are your bills included int he rent?

Reply 3

martin7

Original post by Anonymous

She recently went back to her own rental property to collect a few things and by mistake kept the toilet light on pf her ensuite. Another tenant her flatmate of hers complained to the landlord that the noise of the light is bothering him. She didn't do this unintentionally. She is just under so much pressure ..she just simply forgot.

So the landlord is now threatening to install room monitors to monitor energy usage for every room . My friend and all her flatmates are paying an increased an rent anyway . And now the landlord wants to charge for extra usage on top of that.

Isn't he being unreasonable? Can he do that? Is int this a threate?

I suspect it's a bluff.

To monitor energy use on a per-room basis would probably entail a full-scale rewiring of the house -- it's very unlikely that the existing wiring is done in a way that an individual circuit only supplies one room. And you'd end up with people running extension cables from common areas (which would need to be monitored separately) to their own rooms. A rewire isn't going to be cheap.

If the circuits were already split this way, the noise issue caused by your friend leaving the toilet light on (and presumably the associated extractor fan, since lights shouldn't actually make any noise) could have been dealt with by the housemates simply switching off the associated circuit breaker.

The other issue with charging for per-room use is that I suspect you can't do this using an energy monitor. I suspect that doing this would constitute the landlord reselling energy to the tenants, and I believe you need a properly approved meter (compliant with the Measuring Instruments Directive), and not just an "energy monitor", if you want to do that.