My tenants want to employ a nanny

[cjm10979]

I am a landlord of a ground floor two bed room flat (and a mummy) and my tenants have a 10 month old. The mum is going back to work in 2 months and they have decided to employ a nanny for 3 days a week. The nanny will also be accompanied by her 18 month old child.
The problem is that I don't think the flat would pass any Ofsted inspection (I know this is not necessary for nannies and only childminders). The main issue is that all the 6 internal doors have glass in them (which has been painted white). I think it would be possible for a toddler charging around to smash any of them and stab themselves with glass splinters.
If this risk has been identified before hand would the nanny's indemnity insurance cover this? Surely the nanny's employers would need to rectify this to comply with health & safety at work legislation?
Other health & safety aspects of the flat are good as there are no stairs, 2 external doors and all windows except of the bathroom & toilet have adult accessible windows to the outside.
Are there any nannies out there where their employers are renting? How do the insurance polices work in this situation?

There is no legislation to say you have to comply with building regs - as you say cucumber unless the OP is doing works which need to meet building regs anyway.

It seems like there is a simple solution if you want to resolve it for your own piece of mind but no legal obligation to do so and I agree the posters saying you should sound entitled

I've brought up 4 dcs in 2 different houses that had glass panelled doors--until this thread it had never occurred to me what a potential death trap they were! Amazing they are all alive and unscarred now that I think about it!

My landlords insurance does not cover he house being used as a place of employment, it also forbids tenants running a business there. As does my mortgage. Both would rule this out.

An au pair would be ok then for the tenant as then part of the family. This just serves to illustrate there should be more government rented property in this country not just Buy to Let. The tenant is trying to care for her family and earn a living.

Amazing they are all alive and unscarred now that I think about it!

I'm not sure if it's amazing as obviously not every person who comes across glass doors injures themselves, in the same way that not every person who travels in a car has an accident... but we still wear seatbelts.

I know someone who fell through a glass door as a child and has a badly scarred arm.

Anyway what risks you choose to take on behalf of your own family is a very different kettle of fish to what risks you should be taking in an income earning business. You are charging them money, it is reasonable for them to expect you to make what their buying reasonably safe and secure.

I would dispute that just being a nanny on a premises would constitute running a business as she isn't the tenant but "place of employment" of your tenants might be caught if you have that phrase. However you have been made aware of the situation and if the worst happens I suspect they could reasonably claim that they asked you and you agreed. Which may well make the insurance invalid... but I bet if you checked with them they would probably cover a nanny.

Check your insurance and do a risk assessment on the doors to see if there are any measures you could take to reduce the risk (plywood across low level glass panes) and discuss your concerns like a normal human being! I'm sure between you, you can come up with a sensible plan.

I've never been a nanny (although I am a primary school teacher). In a rented house we lived in my 9 year old threw a toy into a toy box (rather then putting it in, he was lazy rather than deliberately naughty). However he missed and broke a large pane of glass in a door. No one was hurt. The glazier replaced it with safety glass.

As a landlord I would change the doors. I've just had them done throughout my house, it's not that expensive and I couldn't live with a child being scared for life due to not wanting to spend a few pounds. Film would be fine, at a push, for adults. Nanny issue aside, you now have a 10 month old in your flat, pulling itself up, learning to walk. I'd have had it done before now.

As a "mummy" would you be happy with your child living in that flat with the doors as they are?
Or are you just concerned about this issue from a purely financial point if view?

If you're worried the glass will injure a toddler, replace the glass or advise the tenants to get safety film. Isn't that the decent, human thing to do?

Harriet is right, it is not OPs responsibility. The tenants signed a contract to rent the house in the state that it is in. If they didn't like the doors they shouldn't have signed and moved in.

It is not the landlords responsibility to change the doors regardless of nannies or no nannies. What's next, tenants providing, stair gates for every flat/house, or kitchen cupboard locks etc. as a tenant you rent a house as it is advertised. It is up to the tenant to decide if it is suitable for themselves/family.

I agree - surely a rental comes rent as seen. The tenant makes the decision whether it meets their needs or not.

If the family employ a nanny that's between them and nanny. I'm wondering whether there is anything in contract about it (some rentals have clauses about working in home - eg childminder) but other than that I'm not sure there's any responsibility that lies with you.

Why are the glass panels painted white? I think as a safety aspect they need to be changed and I think the op knows this

Maybe this is a trick post

And the tenants have complained and want safety glass

Tbh I thought all rentals had to be safety glass

My Dp does property maintenance for a lettings company and he said the doors need to be shown as glass if glass and get the protective film over them if worried about the glass

Ie they shouldn't be painted over white to hide it. So suggests new doors

My guess is the OP thought the property wouldn't rent well if all the internal doors had glass panels, blondes. Painting over them is a nice cheap way of getting rid of them. Although incredibly stupid if you fail to tell the tenants what you have done. Particularly if they are not safety glass.

Rentals don't have to be anything. You can call up and estate agent tomorrow and get them to rent your house out.

Potentially, if it's in a poor state (or sometimes if it's not) the tenants could contact environmental health and occasionally they can oblige you to do certain works. But this isn't the case here. The LL is under no obligation.

(Apart from
Gas safe. They do have to be gas safe at the time you move in :))

Of course you can't rent a flat in any state you like, and let the "buyer beware". There are all sorts of regulations now covering rentals. Numbers of bathrooms, fire safety. Boiler servicing.

...not to mention the moral obligations.

No there aren't, brandy. Councils and housing associations, yes. The odd council provides guidelines for student housing which they enforce.
What regulations are you referring to for individual landlords? Gas safety aside.

When I was at boarding school a friend fell into a door with a glass panel, put her arm out to break her fall and sliced her wrist open. Only some quick thinking work from a First Aiding girl and the very Malory Towers use of a petticoat as a tourniquet stopped disaster.

Now clearly hundreds of girls had run around that dormitory in the previous decades and come to no harm whatsoever, so the risk is not enormous, but it is real, and probably greater for painted glass.

My instincts would be to either a) specifically notify the tenants that the glass panels are not safety glass, so they can take appropriate steps b) replace the doors.

There are lots of regs regarding HMOs brandy. Single family houses, not so much.

I think it's about what kind of business you want to run. One where you do the minimum and pocket the cash, while simultaneously worrying about your no claims bonus, or one where you think 'actually, now I've thought about that, that's a bigger risk than I'm prepared to take. For the sake of a couple of hundred quid I'll just sort out the doors.'

thehealthandsafetyconsultancy.co.uk/guides/glassdoors.asp

Whatever the legalities iiwy I would not wish to feel responsible if an accident occurred , to your tenants , their dc or anyone in their home guest or employee. How much would it cost you to change the glass doors to safety glass or replace them.

My my some people have managed to get on their high horse with this one!!

There is no legal obligation for landlords to make properties specifically child friendly. In this case the tenants have lived there for 5 years and still want to live there and have not complained that it's unsafe. They have just renewed their tenancy agreement, if they thought it was unsafe/unsuitable for a child they could have moved out. The panes of glass in the doors are small ones with wood framing. So, as one poster mentioned a child throwing a toy, I imagine this would break one or two of the small panes but not all the glass.

As far a insurance is concerned, my landlord insurance would definitely not cover accidents/fires whilst the nanny is working there as she is not the named tenant and obviously the named tenants wouldn't be there as they are at work. I also have emergency accommodation cover for the tenants if there was a fire/flood. The tenants under this arrangement would still pay their rent whilst the property was being rebuilt and then move back in when the work was done.

To all of you who think this is none of my business, you are definitely wrong here. If a tenant does anything that has the potential to invalidate the landlord's insurance, it definitely IS THIER BUSINESS. The most common reason a landlord's insurance is invalidated are when tenants decide they want one or more adults to move into the property without telling the landlord and therefore can not be named on the tenancy agreement. If one of these unnamed persons caused a fire in the property the insurance company would invalidate the claim as the policy only covers tenants who are named on the tenancy agreement. Likewise, the tenancy agreement specifies that the tenants use the property as a residential dwelling only. They now want a change of use to a place of work, this means the landlord insurance is invalid when the nanny is working there. I need to ascertain whether the tenant's employers liability insurance or the nanny's liability insurance covers a number of situations.

The tenants have become employers and now have legal obligations themselves.

I think I will suggest that they need to arrange for an independent health & safety surveyor to come around and assess the property for their purposes of providing childcare employment. It will then be their responsibility to implement any recommendations and proof to their insurance company they that have done a risk assessment.

I will then be asking a series of insurance related questions, for which they will need a lawyer to answers for them. If I don't get satisfactory answers to these I will have no option but to forbid them from employing a nanny.

At the end of the day, it is my flat and if there is a fire/accident there I need to be certain which insurance policy covers me for the damage/liability.

Oh so you were just posting so you could tell us all how marvellously clever you are?

What a fantastic waste of everybody's time. If you bothered to read the replies you will notice that many of them have mentioned your insurance, moral obligations, situations where you would definitely and potentially have liability. But hey, you obviously know best and had something to prove.

What a bore.