I've just got back from helping move DS into his new student flat. DS hadn't seen it before moving in as he was abroad on placement until last week and he trusted his friends to find somewhere. On the surface, it looks fine - newish, smart kitchen and bathroom, wooden floors, marble tiles on the bathroom floor, beautiful original fireplaces, new mattresses etc. But it's all fur coat and no knickers...
It's a converted Victorian building with a shop in the ground floor and basement, then 3 flats above, each flat is on 2 levels but they are half levels IYSWIM so it is 5 tall storeys in total (very high ceilings). They are on the 2nd floor. I've just checked planning, which goes back to 1990, and the land registry. The building has only ever been sold as a whole and there is no planning application to convert it into flats, so assuming there ever was planning permission, current building regs may not apply as it was done years ago :-/
My main concerns are:
There is no emergency lighting in the flat or communal hallway/staircase.
The smoke alarms in the flat are not integrated (one in the kitchen, one in the hall), just normal domestic battery alarms that we can't test as the ceilings are about 12 feet high. There are no smoke alarms in the communal staircase/hallway.
The front doors of the flats appear to be normal, thin, internal wooden doors, not fire doors with an internal style lock (not Yale) and there is no smoke seal so there is a gap under the door.
DS's bedroom has a an internal door that has had the handle removed and hardboard put over it and a painted out over-door window that would have opened onto the communal staircase for the whole building. There is a gap under the door. So basically, there is no wall between his room and the communal hallway. This is the same for all 3 of the flats. One bedroom has a semi-blocked up doorway onto the communal staircase.
The back of the building is totally inaccessible to the fire brigade (building behind), and the fire escape only goes to the first floor. The front is on the road so accessible in a fire but the double glazed windows only open at the top.
The estate agent sent them the EPC with the contract but no gas safety certificate (that could be a mistake, it doesn't mean there isn't one). They also didn't send the How to Rent booklet so they are pretty incompetent. Plus the boiler is really old and although it seems to work, it has zero pressure and it has been built into a cupboard so you can't access the taps to repressure it. I guess that's not a gas safety issue though.
The washing machine and cooker are plugged into a normal plug socket attached to the side of the cupboard under the sink, right under the U-bend.
I was only there for 15 minutes so we didn't do a through check. And those are just the safety concerns - 2 of the wardrobes toppled over because they were propped up on broken legs and the hall light fell out of the ceiling when we opened the door and is hanging is by a wire... It also seems that the radiators in the hallway branch off the central heating from the flat and there is no electricity meter for the communal hallway so somebody else is paying the landlord's bill.
AIBU to think this is a death trap? Are there any environmental health officers, planners, building regs experts out there who can either put my mind at rest that it's safe or tell me what law they are in breach of? Or tell me what I fear - it isn't very safe but it's perfectly legal :-/
Not a safety issue, but the agents have also just told them that the landlord doesn't do inventories. If they want one they have to pay for it. I know it's illegal to charge tenants for inventories now but what happens if the landlord doesn't want an inventory...? It feels like they have found a loophole to get the tenants to pay. And confirms my fear that they are charlatans...