WAR IN UKRAINE NEW CONSUMER UNIT REQUIRED

gkenyon 

When I was a kid back in the 1960’s my Dad was building new houses along with his business partner who was a Latvian guy who came over here after the Second World War bringing his mother with him, because of the complicated issues left over from the war Latvia was not a safe place for them to be,

Building houses and Eastern European refugees were part of my childhood, Uldis Pinka-Finks known as John, bottom of the page in this London Gazette link https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/43135/page/8505/data.pdf  became a British Citizen in 1963, my Dad was the other director of the company mentioned in the London Gazette, they actually traded using my Dad’s name because John thought using his name wasn’t a good business plan.

In the same year the Governments Parker Morris Committee set the standards for social housing, this became an issue for builders of new private homes for sale, because a lot of the new homes for sale didn’t actually meet the social housing standards laid down by the government.

Builders actually started advertising new build homes for sale as meeting the Parker Morris standards, because purchasers expected them to be at least as good as a council house, though many weren’t.

Over the last fifty years I have seen housing standards actually fall in many instances, particularly in student housing and shared rental homes, the Homes in Multiple Occupation that have become the cash cows for Buy to Let landlords with people paying to live in lofts and cellars that would have not met the required standards, particularly the minimum ceiling height requirements that was removed from the Building Regulations because it was originally introduced in a Public Health Act to provide ventilation for gas lighting and as people don’t have gas lights anymore it was deemed there isn’t any reason why people actually need to live in rooms they can stand up in.

I was actually doing a landlords EICR and was in the cellar of a HMO I could not stand up in testing at the consumer unit, when the landlords brought six students down to view it as their potential home for the next two years and none of them could stand up.

The local council has had a crack down on HMOs and many now have fewer people living in them or have been extended to increase communal living space.

It will be interesting if the government and councils try to apply the landlords and HMO requirements to private homes that will be used to provide shared accommodation with the home owners and Ukrainian refugees, because many of these private homes will not meet the requirements for privately rented homes and HMOs.

I would have to do things to get my own home pass inspection as a HMO, we have a high chain link fence across the bottom of our garden over and above the brick wall and wrought iron style panels a previous owner had built, we had to have it because my wife registered as a child minder around thirty years ago and the council insisted we have a more secure fence as well as a sorter flex on the kettle, protective film on windows and other “safety measures” we did not have for our own kids, yet I did not think we were bad parents!

I would guess a lot of prospective hosts will be “empty nesters” more mature people whose own children have left home leaving them with spare accommodation, it is quite possible they are told they actually need to undertake home improvements to accommodate refugees in rooms previously occupied by thrift own children.

gkenyon 

When I was a kid back in the 1960’s my Dad was building new houses along with his business partner who was a Latvian guy who came over here after the Second World War bringing his mother with him, because of the complicated issues left over from the war Latvia was not a safe place for them to be,

Building houses and Eastern European refugees were part of my childhood, Uldis Pinka-Finks known as John, bottom of the page in this London Gazette link https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/43135/page/8505/data.pdf  became a British Citizen in 1963, my Dad was the other director of the company mentioned in the London Gazette, they actually traded using my Dad’s name because John thought using his name wasn’t a good business plan.

In the same year the Governments Parker Morris Committee set the standards for social housing, this became an issue for builders of new private homes for sale, because a lot of the new homes for sale didn’t actually meet the social housing standards laid down by the government.

Builders actually started advertising new build homes for sale as meeting the Parker Morris standards, because purchasers expected them to be at least as good as a council house, though many weren’t.

Over the last fifty years I have seen housing standards actually fall in many instances, particularly in student housing and shared rental homes, the Homes in Multiple Occupation that have become the cash cows for Buy to Let landlords with people paying to live in lofts and cellars that would have not met the required standards, particularly the minimum ceiling height requirements that was removed from the Building Regulations because it was originally introduced in a Public Health Act to provide ventilation for gas lighting and as people don’t have gas lights anymore it was deemed there isn’t any reason why people actually need to live in rooms they can stand up in.

I was actually doing a landlords EICR and was in the cellar of a HMO I could not stand up in testing at the consumer unit, when the landlords brought six students down to view it as their potential home for the next two years and none of them could stand up.

The local council has had a crack down on HMOs and many now have fewer people living in them or have been extended to increase communal living space.

It will be interesting if the government and councils try to apply the landlords and HMO requirements to private homes that will be used to provide shared accommodation with the home owners and Ukrainian refugees, because many of these private homes will not meet the requirements for privately rented homes and HMOs.

I would have to do things to get my own home pass inspection as a HMO, we have a high chain link fence across the bottom of our garden over and above the brick wall and wrought iron style panels a previous owner had built, we had to have it because my wife registered as a child minder around thirty years ago and the council insisted we have a more secure fence as well as a sorter flex on the kettle, protective film on windows and other “safety measures” we did not have for our own kids, yet I did not think we were bad parents!

I would guess a lot of prospective hosts will be “empty nesters” more mature people whose own children have left home leaving them with spare accommodation, it is quite possible they are told they actually need to undertake home improvements to accommodate refugees in rooms previously occupied by thrift own children.