Housing: Kent & Medway Local Authorities have no idea about the number of hazards in the 145,000 private rented homes
Housing professionals who work for local authorities in Kent & Medway do not know how many category one hazards, or what the most common hazards are in Kent & Medway’s 145,000 plus homes in the private rented sector are, says a document published by the Kent Housing Group, Private Sector Housing Subgroup, on 6 Nov 2024
The Kent Housing Group, who have representation from a Head of Service within the local authority or Chief Executive of a housing association made this startling admission just over a month ago.
The document at page 4 states:
“evidence base on local housing conditions was scarce” and,
“they hadn’t found good evidence on the number of homes with a Category 1 hazard, or even the number of homes found with a Category 1 hazard.
They also hadn’t found evidence on the most common hazards found in K&M.
Across Kent and Medway, 19.2% of households or 145,566 households live in the private rented sector, according to the latest data commissioned by the Kent Housing Group, and released in Oct 2024.
Catergory 1 & 2 hazards are set out in the The Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS); which was introduced by the Housing Act 2004, and has been in force since April 2006. It is the main system for assessing and enforcing housing standards in England and Wales.
Most HHSRS work is carried out in relation to private rented housing as this is the sector with the “poorest housing standards.”
People of all ages live in these 145,000 plus homes rented out by landlords. People with disabilities, people with health and well-being issues and not forgetting health includes mental health.
The HHSRS is broken down in twenty nine hazards which are rated at either category 1 or category 2 levels by qualified Council Environmental Health Officers.
The 29 hazards (examples damp & mould, excess cold, noise, food safety, falls associated with stairs and steps, electrical hazards, fire etc) can make tenants lives miserable.
A category 1 = a hazard is a serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety. Any or all of the 29 hazards set out in the HHSRS can be Cat 1 hazards.
A category 1 hazard means the local authority has duty to take appropriate action as soon as possible. Where they have a general duty to act, they must take the most appropriate of the following courses of action with a relevant notice:
- serve an improvement notice
- make a prohibition order
- serve a hazard awareness notice
- take emergency remedial action, or make an emergency prohibition order
- make a demolition order
- declare a clearance area
But KHG can’t take any action as they haven’t “found good evidence on the number of homes with a Category 1 hazard, or even the number of homes found with a Category 1 hazard.” This means all Council’s in K&M will be underestimating the levels of category 1 hazards across the 145,000 homes in the private rented sector in K&M.
If a hazard is less serious or less urgent, this is known as a Category 2 hazard.
The HHSRS is not a pass/fail test; it is a risk-based assessment of residential housing conditions.
If you suspect you may have any of the hazards, then first inform you landlord/agent, asap by letter, text, email etc, with pictures where possible. If after a reasonable time has elapsed, 14 days, the landlord has not responded to you, then you can escalate this to your Council’s private rented sector team and ask for an inspection.
However, that said, tenants do not tend to report hazard/disrepair issues. This is because of what are called retaliatory eviction, also sometimes referred to as revenge eviction, which is used to describe the situation where a private landlord serves notice on a tenant – a s21 possession notice – asking them to leave in response to the tenant’s request for repairs, or where they have sought assistance from a local authority’s environmental health department.
Section 33 of the Deregulation Act 2015 prohibits the service of a section 21 notice of intention to seek possession in England within six months of the service of a ‘relevant notice’ or, where the operation of the ‘relevant notice’ has been suspended, within six months starting from the date on which the suspension ends. A relevant notice is defined as an Improvement Notice for a category 1 or category 2 hazard, or an Emergency Remedial Action Notice. Tenants must have written to the landlord beforehand, giving them 14 days to respond.
It is quite “unbelievable” that in 2024, K&M Local authorities have no clue as to the most common hazards or even the number of Category one hazards in the 145,000 plus private rented homes in the County.
If you have a housing disrepair issue, and your landlord won’t fix the issues, then do speak to your local Citizens Advice Bureau, Shelter, or a housing solicitor, as in some instances disrepair claims can be done on legal aid, or even a no win no fee basis.
The Shepway Vox Team
Journalism for the People NOT the Powerful
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