Calls made for simplified route for social housing providers to gain access to properties for essential maintenance and safety checks

New research, commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA), has found that social landlords, including local authorities and ALMOs, face “significant challenges” in gaining access to a minority of tenanted properties for essential maintenance, inspections and safety checks.

This has led to concern from providers that they will attract regulatory or legal action - against a backdrop of tightened legal duties, such as those produced under Awaab’s Law.

‘No Access’- is the shorthand phrase a landlord traditionally records when a tenant doesn’t give permission or doesn’t respond to reasonable requests for entry to their home.

Looking at legal issues, the report acknowledges an “acute awareness” from landlords that legal remedies should be a “last resort” when all other attempts to gain access have failed.

The report warns that legal action is expensive and complex – noting that many calls have been made for a government-endorsed “simplified route” to gaining access in complex and persistent cases. 

Across the study, legal issues were cited as a problem, summed up as:

• “The law has ambiguities and some staff are not clear on what legislation should be used in which circumstances.
• There can be very long delays in the court system.
• Some staff are very clear on what legal routes they can and should use – but opinions can be strongly divergent.
• Case law can add a further dimension of uncertainty.
• Practice and rulings in courts can vary according to geographical location.
• Even when injunctions are granted, this does not necessarily resolve the problem.”

A statutory breach of tenancy occurs when a tenant has been given at least 24 hours’ notice in writing that access to their property is required to identify and/or undertake repairs, and the tenant fails to give access.

However, where access is not given, consideration needs to be given to whether the tenant ‘cannot’ or ‘will not’ give the provider access, says the report.

It adds: “The provider will need to consider whether this is due to a physical or mental health condition, such as a disability. If so, reasonable adjustments must be made. For example, if a person is deaf, then a full morning/afternoon appointment is not necessarily reasonable. Either an appointment at a fixed time is required so they can feel the door being knocked and/or a doorbell that lights up would be a reasonable adjustment to enable that person to comply with their tenancy. Without these adjustments they could not comply.”

A large majority of survey participants wanted a “clearer” and “more straightforward” route to gaining access, calling for:

• Clarity in law around the meaning of terms like ‘all reasonable steps’
• Simplified legal route(s)
• Fast track legal process for access on safety critical issues
• A public campaign by government to stress the importance of allowing access.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has been approached for comment.

Lottie Winson