A more spacious home tends to be a more enjoyable home, and the Government intends to introduce legislation to monitor the minimum amount of space in private lettings in an attempt to reduce overcrowding. There are now new regulations governing HMOs, or houses of multiple occupation. In an HMO, there may be at least three tenants who are not part of the same household but may share facilities such as a kitchen or a bathroom.
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Minimum bedroom sizes
Part of this new legislation covers the minimum sizes of rooms where tenants sleep. A room where two adults sleep will have to be at least 10.22 square metres. A room in which one adult sleeps will have to be at least 6.51 square metres in size, and a room for a child under the age of 10 will have to be at least 4.64 square metres in size.
Changes are coming
This legislation is expected to pass into law during the early part of 2018. The Department of Communities and Local Government said that the rise in demand for HMOs had given some unscrupulous landlords the opportunity to provide sub-standard housing that leads to overcrowding, undesirable tenant behaviour and a general lack of standards for health and safety.
The Government also plans further measures to get tougher on landlords who are not considered to be serving the needs of their tenants properly. For more on what may happen to landlords that councils believe are exploiting tenants, see this report from The Guardian.
Renting out property seems to keep generating more rules to make it more complicated for landlords. However, one tool that has emerged to make things simpler is property inventory software. If you are interested in finding out more about the possibilities of property inventory software, it’s time to take a look at what an expert in the field, such as https://inventorybase.co.uk/, has to offer.
Many landlords manage their properties properly, so they will have little to fear from these new regulations. However, for those who think it is fine to crowd vulnerable people into tiny spaces with inadequate facilities, a reckoning may be coming. The effects of poor housing also spread to neighbours and those living nearby, and no one should have to endure the effects of sub-standard accommodation.