Someone should do something about that…

Ever heard someone talk about where they live and thought – “That’s not right - surely that’s not legal!”?

Thanks to a successful bid for government funding, Exeter City Council and its partners in the Exeter Private Rental Forum are able to offer FREE training in basic housing standards for the staff of organisations who support tenants (including students) in private rented sector accommodation.

This training comes with a free checklist to help anyone interviewing or talking to any tenants who appear to live in sub-standard accommodation, or where there seems to be poor compliance with running a tenancy, especially involving vulnerable tenants, people being given placements in private sector accommodation and to people who are socially isolated.

We’d like to encourage them to complain, so that we can refer them to partners who may be able to help improve their accommodation (such as through energy upgrades or better heating), or, if no help is available, and their landlords are unwilling to improve the property, we may be able to take enforcement action.

This will link to new plans for referral systems so that we can all track what happens about the property. It will tie in with Exeter City Council’s planned update of its enforcement policies, new recruitment of staff to act on poor housing, and funding for background data mining to highlight potentially substandard or unlicensed Houses in Multiple Occupation.

The training will offer tools to assist your staff to recognise the issues, and more robust ways of being able to pass on information about substandard properties – and if it’s successful, the scheme publicity will be bringing more clients through your doors!

All-in-One Course 1

This course covers the essentials of key housing standards, including:

* Housing Health & Safety Rating System (the basic yardstick for all housing), with a detailed pictorial look at the most commonly occurring and most important hazards in real homes

* Fitness for Human Habitation - the newly introduced law empowering tenant action - what are the features to look out for?

* Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES) - from April 2020, no low energy efficiency homes can be let out - but what are the exemptions, what should tenants avoid?

* Detector regulations - what smoke and carbon monoxide detectors should be in the home, just as importantly, where?

* Shared housing, Rooms for rent (Houses in Multiple Occupation) – how big should it be, what are the facilities that should be there, should it be licensed and what does the Council expect to see?

* The rules for managing Houses in Multiple Occupation – what standards should landlords and agents be applying?

* If there’s a problem, what can be done, what happens next?

* A quick checklist for identifying and recording issues – for interviewers or people visiting the property

PLEASE NOTE: If you have attended the recent Letting Agent training this session is an amalgmantion of those two training sessions therefore not appropriate for Letting Agents who have already attending this training.