Just a quick note to record that The Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 have been made. The only purpose of these regulations is to address the mess that had been made of the prescribed section 21 notice included in the The Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015, which as we noted had, well, problems. This new version at least lacks obvious horrors.
Also, after a bit of a hiccough in the Lords, The Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015 will be in force from 1 October 2015. In short, each storey of a let property must have a smoke alarm. A carbon monoxide detector must be fitted in any residential room with a solid fuel burning appliance. The detectors & alarms must be checked on each new tenancy by the landlord. Local Authorities can enforce any breach and there is no grace period – 1 October 2015 is it.
For some reasons they replaced several perfectly fine references to periodic tenancies ‘periods’ by references to rent payments periods…
They still want all joint-landlords to sign… Etc.
It is an improvement, though.
The Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015 made form:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/1693/contents/made
Thank you. Added.
Smoke Alarm Regs – ‘there is no grace period ‘
Technically true and very unsatisfactory for the larger private sector landlords who are expected to fit smoke and CO alarms to all their properties within the space of a couple of weeks.
But there is a sort of grace period within the regs – the penalty cannot be applied immediately. The LA is required to serve a remedial notice and the landlord has 28 days to comply before a penalty can be made.