About six months ago, I noticed quite a lot of PCC council house tenants were posting comments on the Pembrokeshire Council Watch Facebook page.
The tenants were wondering why electricians from as far afield as Manchester and Glasgow were turning up on their doorsteps to conduct safety tests on their wiring circuits.
Many of the comments criticised the fact that this seemed to be snatching the bread out of the mouths of children of local electricians.
I couldn’t believe the council would discriminate against local tradesmen without good reason, so I asked a tenant friend of mine to make enquiries.
As I suspected, it was more cock-up than conspiracy, because the reason for the employment of these long-distant sparkies were some new rules the Welsh Government had brought in that reduced the period between tests on electrical installations on rented accommodation (public and private) from ten years to five years.
Obviously, that left a lot of properties in the 5-10 year category out of compliance, and the council, having failed to notice this change, was taking emergency action by importing electricians from far and wide in an attempt to bring itself within the law.
An innocent explanation having been found, I went back to sleep.
However, what I hadn’t realised was that what had inspired this panic-striken influx of out-of-town sparkies wasn’t simply a desire to comply with the regulations, but the realisation that failure to comply carried the risk of serious financial penalties.
The scales fell from my eyes back in July when into my inbox popped a link to an article on the website Inside Housing to which I subscribe.
The opening paragraph read:
“Welsh housing associations are heading to court to seek clarity over their duties under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act amid claims they could be non-compliant for failing to provide copies of electrical safety certification, in a case that could cost the sector a significant sum.”
Housing Associations and local authority housing departments are what are known as RSLs (Registered Social Landlords) so it occurred to me that, as it was possible that PCC’s housing department might be in the same leaky boat as the Housing Associations, I would keep my antennae in alert mode.
The next development came from Inside Housing on 11 November when the opening paragraph read:
“Welsh tenants who do not receive safety reports are entitled to withhold their rent, judges have ruled in a landmark case that could affect the entire housing sector.”
The words “entire housing sector” would include PCC, and after a bit of time on Google, I managed to locate the actual court judgement which can be found at Coastal Housing.
If you find this rather long and indigestible a more readable summary can be found at Local Government Lawyer.
What the Judges found was that the law provides that, if a tenant has not been provided with an electrical safety certificate in a timely fashion, their dwelling is “deemed” to be “uninhabitable” and they are under no obligation to pay rent.
The article claims that social landlords in Wales could be on the hook for as much as £50 million.
This is a very long and complex judgement and I don’t claim to have read every word (or to have understood every word that I have read) but the judges appear to have found that, unless a valid certificate has been provided to the tenant, the property is deemed to uninhabitable.
And the summary of the case in Local Government Lawyer seems to suggest that the words “deemed uninhabitable” mean the dwelling is uninhabitable even if it subsequently passes the test with flying colours – or even if it had a valid test certificate which the landlord had failed to issue to the tenant.
And if the property is uninhabitable the tenant has no obligation to pay rent.
Clearly, if a tenant refused to pay rent in such circumstances, the council would have no comeback, but the more interesting question is whether the tenant is due a refund for any rent paid during the time the property was deemed uninhabitable (the period between the existing certificate’s fifth anniversary and the date the new certificate was issued).
And, following on from that, whether the tenant is automatically due a refund, or whether they need to apply for such.
According to the Local Government Lawyer that question is to be settled at a future High Court hearing.
As a member of the governance and audit committee, I would have expected this matter to have been on the agenda when we discussed the authority’s risk register at our meeting on 25 November.
Its absence could mean either that PCC is unaffected by this judgement, or that it has embarked on one of its trademark cover-ups.
No prizes for guessing which way I am betting.
PS. The irony of all this is that the Renting Homes (Wales) Act, which introduced a mass of draconian new regulations on the rental market in Wales, designed to rein in those money grabbing landlords in the private sector, has had its greatest effect on the Welsh Government’s friends in the Registered Social Landlords sector of the market.