Industry News
Unsafe gas work leads to prosecutions and heavy fines
An unregistered plumber has been sentenced after carrying out gas work at more than 1,000 addresses in north London over a two-year period. Whirlpool UK Appliances Limited was also fined for allowing the sub-contractor to carry out the work on its behalf. Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard that
Errol Dillon carried out gas work at the properties without being Gas Safe Registered. Dillon had previously been registered while employed at a previous company contracted to Whirlpool. When he left that company and resumed contract work for Whirlpool through another company, he provided false details, which they failed to check. An investigation by the Health and Safety
Executive (HSE) alongside Gas Safe Register (GSR) found Dillon had provided Whirlpool with a false GSR registration number, which Whirlpool failed to check. Whirlpool UK Appliances Limited of Peterborough, pleaded guilty to breaching regulation 3(3) of the Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations 1998 and was fined £ £90,000 and costs of £9,358.22. Dillon of Woodford Green, Essex
pleaded guilty to breaching regulation 3(3) of the Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations 1998. He was sentenced at an earlier hearing to six months imprisonment, suspended for two years, with 50 hours unpaid work requirement and costs of £2,000. In south Wales a self-employed gas
engineer was fined after two residents were hospitalised for carbon monoxide poisoning at a house in Pontardulais. Swansea Magistrates Court heard that Philip Cannon carried out unsafe gas work on a boiler in the property on 23 January 2015, leaving the boiler emitting extremely high levels of Carbon Monoxide (CO). All three present in the property were
later treated in hospital for Carbon Monoxide poisoning, including Mr Cannon. An investigation by the HSE and GSR found Cannon failed to prevent the gas leak after working on the boiler. He allowed the boiler to operate in an unsafe manner and he did not run the required tests, which would have detected the CO at the earliest chance. Cannon of Neath Road, Pontardawe
pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 6 (1) of the Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations 1998 Section 33 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. He was fined £933 and ordered to pay costs of £4301.66.
One in four households will rent privately by end of 2021
large corporate landlords moving in to take a bigger market share. A new report from estate agency Knight
T
Frank says that almost one in four households will be renting privately by the end of 2021, up from one in five today. Soaring house prices and stagnant wages are being blamed for putting home ownership out of the reach of growing numbers of potential home owners. A key trend that will also emerge is a shift
from small, private landlords owning the vast majority of rented homes, to a growth in the number and stock holding of large corporate landlords, such as City firms and property companies. With around 5m households already living
in privately rented homes, Knight Frank expects the figure to rise to 5.79m over the next five years. This is continuing its increase over the diminishing social housing sector, at 4.3m social tenants, where right to buy sales are continuing to reduce numbers despite the focus on building new affordable homes.
Knight Frank commissioned a YouGov
survey of more than 10,000 tenants and spoke to 26 major investors. It revealed a startling 40 per cent of renters are paying more than 50 per cent of their incomes on rent.
Affordability Not surprisingly, 68 per cent of renters still expect to be living in rented accommodation in three years’ time. The most common reason for renting was saving for a deposit to buy a property (30 per cent), followed by 21 per cent
he number of households in the private rented sector is set to rise to almost 5.8 million over the next five years, with
who said renting allowed them to live in an area where they could not afford to buy, while 18 per cent said renting was more affordable than paying a mortgage. Other results were:
• 8 per cent said they were renting because they did not want the responsibility of owning a home;
• 6 per cent needed the flexibility because of work;
• 6 per cent were downsizing; • 6 per cent cannot find an appropriate property to buy; and
• 5 per cent do not want to be stuck in one location.
Young professionals aged 25 to 34 make up
the largest proportion of private renters and this is expected to remain the case in 2021 – but they will be renting for longer than now while trying to save enough to buy a home, said Diana Babacic of PRS Research Consultancy, one of the authors of the Knight Frank report. She is also predicting slightly faster growth in the number of renters under 25, as well as an increase in older renters, especially the baby boomers. Buy-to-let landlords have dominated the
private market in recent years, but the introduction of higher stamp duty and tax changes affecting mortgage interest relief has prompted many private landlords to sell up. City investment firms like Legal & General
have started building thousands of flats for rent around the country in recent years. Knight Frank estimate the burgeoning “build to rent” sector is currently worth £25bn, but this will soar to £70bn by 2021.
Worst places for buy to let investment
Investment firm Property Partner has identified the ten worst places to buy housing for renting out in the UK and they are all in the south and east of the country. Poole in Dorset is the worst place according
to the online invester with neighbouring Bournemouth in fourth place. In fact Dorset is the only county in England with two places in the worst ten listing Research carried out by the firm focussed on five key factors in towns and cities for investors
24 | HMM July 2017 |
www.housingmmonline.co.uk
to have regard for – average incomes, median house prices, yearly rents, house price to earnings ratio and the annual rental yield. The annual yields varied from 0.22 to 3.73 per cent for the bottom ten, showing low returns for high outlays on deposits and loan costs. Places at the bottom of the list all have high
house prices and low levels of affordability with average property prices dwarfing the area’s average income. Other places on the ‘worst list’ are all taken by towns and cities that have experienced long periods of rising house prices – so at least investors can take comfort from future increases in the value of their assets. After Poole, the list of shame includes
Central London, Sevenoaks (Kent), Bournemouth, Cambridge, Oxford, Winchester (Hampshire), St Albans (Herts), Chelmsford (Essex) and finally Brighton.
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