Three students in joint tenancy , up to recently living happily, wandering into each others rooms and sharing stuff at will. Have now argued. One tenant has locked bedroom door and gone away but remains tenant and pays rent. Cannot leave as joint tenancy. She has left her bedroom windows wide open, her room is 1st floor and there has been several publicized cases of students climbing in through upstairs bedroom windows in the area after having locked themselves out. Two other tenants allege windows left open to cause worry of intruders and to bump up the fuel costs. HMO rules require that the restrictors be fitted. But tenant of that room refuses access to contractor on basis that she is not at the house and does not expect to return for at least a month. I obviously don’t want to evict all three and can’t evict one of the three as its a joint tenancy. Do the two tenants at the house have the legal power to authorise me to access the room of the third tenant that is absent and that has said I cannot enter?
Question
During the Tenancy (Wales) | Entry and Refusal (Wales) | Wales
Tenants internal dispute and access.
Answer
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1 Comment
Tricky one!
We believe on balance because the tenancy is joint and several and crucially the tenant you’re talking about doesn’t rent the room itself but instead the whole house jointly with others, we can’t see any reason why a contractor can’t attend on the authority of any one of the joint tenants.
Obviously, it would be ideal to try to explain the tenant the problems and get agreement to go into the room but, it can’t do the property any good having a window wide open in winter.