A survey of landlords has found that hundreds of thousands of tenants are living in unsafe housing with missing smoke or carbon monoxide alarms as landlords aren’t meeting obligations on repairs that they are responsible for.

The data, collected by ComRes on behalf of Citizens Advice, found that a quarter of landlords failed to make sure there's a smoke alarm on every floor of their properties and a further 26% failed to carry out annual gas safety work. 

According to the report, 90,000 homes do not have a working carbon monoxide alarm, despite this being regulation, and one in six tenants say the disrepair in their home was causing a 'major threat to their health and safety.' 

ComRes is calling for a national housing body for private renting to set standards, which could include creating a home “MOT”, setting a “fit-and-proper-person” test for landlords and standardising rental contracts.

Gillian Guy, Chief Executive of Citizens Advice, said. “Too many private renters live in hazardous homes - often with dangerous flaws.

“The government must establish a national housing body to ensure landlords let property that meet legal standards and gives renters the support they need when they don’t.”

75% of landlords agreed a single national housing body responsible for setting standards would improve the quality of their work, with nearly half of them saying they were unaware there were potential fines for not checking carbon monoxide and smoke alarms were in working order. 

Original Source
Citizens Advice