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- 47 –
On 24th November, 1961, a new Housing Act came into operation
providing new powers for dealing with bad living conditions in houses
let in lodgings or occupied by members of more than one family. (It
also makes a number of changes in the law affecting condemned houses,
improvement grants, town development and housing subsidies.)
The 1961 Act provides, amongst other powers:-
(i) A new power to apply a code of management to individual
houses in which proper standards of management have not
been observed. The requirements of this code are prescribed
in the Housing (Management of Houses in Multiple
Occupation) Regulations, 1962, which came into operation
on 22nd May, 1962.
(ii) Stronger powers to require the provision of additional
facilities and amenities essential to decent living
conditions, and the provision of adequate means of
escape from fire.
(iii) A power for local authorities to carry out works themselves
in default and recover the cost.
(iv) A new power to make a direction limiting the number of
persons who may live in a house, or part of a house,
which is in multiple occupation.
The new powers are designed to deal primarily with the worst
type of multi-occupied house.
Part I of the Regulations mentioned in (i) above deals with
their application and interpretation; Part II prescribes the duties
of management to be discharged by the manager of the house; and
Part III deals with ancillary requirements including the provision of
information. It also places certain obligations on occupants for the
purpose of ensuring that the manager can effectively carry out his
duties.
Responsibility for management will rest on an owner or
lessee who receives the rents or other payments from tenants or
lodgers, including any agent or trustee through whom the rents are
received.
The main substance of the code of management is contained
in Part II of the Regulations which deals with the manager's responsibilities
for repair and maintenance. Broadly, these responsibilities
amount to ensuring the repair (including reasonable
decorative repair), cleanliness and good order of the parts of the
house in common use; the proper maintenance throughout the house of
installations for basic services, such as water supply, drainage,
gas and electricity; the repair and good order of all means of
ventilation and means of escape from fire. The manager is also
required to ensure an adequate provision of refuse bins and to take
reasonable precautions to protect tenants from injury as a result
of structural conditions in the house.
Where rooms are let to tenants or lodgers as their living
accommodation, the manager must ensure that the rooms are clean and
in a reasonable state of structural repair at the commencement of the
letting and that defects are remedied in the rooms which are already
let, when the Regulations are applied to a house. There is a
continuing obligation for the repair and proper working order of
installations in the rooms, for the supply of water, gas and electricity
as well as baths, sinks, basins and sanitary conveniences.