Room in student house without a window

[Evalina]

DD's in her second year and has moved into what is otherwise a nice student house. However her room has no window. It has 2 doors, one into the hall and the other into a kitchen/lounge. So she has no natural light and no direct ventilation. She does get some light (and reduced privacy) through the frosted glazed door between her and the kitchen, but if she opens it to get air, then she gets cooking fumes and noise too.

We have raised it with local council HMO office who are not being very responsive, although they have spoken to landlord who has put in a brighter lightbulb! Landlord has said to DD's housemates that he knows loads of people at the council, and that if he's told to do anything it won't happen until next summer, so DD is wasting her time complaining about it. He's also said his wife is having a baby and is stressed at the thought they might have to pay to sort it out. As a result DD's housemates, who all have nice rooms with proper windows, are telling her to drop it, even though they have all declined to swap rooms with her.

I believe the problem could be fixed for less than £5k, which given collectively they are paying £38k in rent for the year is not too shocking.

Not sure what else to do really. Anyone got any advice?

I hope they check the window still works/can be opened and accessed. It really doesn't look like a huge job at all, the picture really helps. Hope unipol get behind you now they know what it's like. Seeing the lit kitchen looking into your daughters dark room is really sad.

UPDATE: Whilst I haven't yet had a response back from my email to the council or the Landlord, and am still waiting for Unipol to come back to me, there does appear to be some progress.

The Landlord has copied me in on an email response to the council. It seems they asked him to confirm that the work discussed was going to take place. He has asked for confirmation that the fire safety glass he is proposing to put in at the top of the new partition will allow sufficient light into the room.

So it looks like that as well as incorporating the skylight into DD's room, the plan is to include a glass panel from the ceiling down about 30cm to provide additional light from the kitchen/living room.

Just hoping that a date gets confirmed soon.

LIZS - yes the skylight is in the recess immediately outside DD's door.

Also yes there is still a small top window above the glazed door, but it can only be opened a couple of centimetres for some reason. The skylight is a velux window and DD props open her door and has the skylight open as much as possible.

Well if that gets done, it still won't be a great room, but much more tolerable, and a great lesson in not putting up and shutting up! Fingers crossed for you and your daughter.

That sounds promising

Can't believe the posters telling you to leave it. I'd complain about council to ombudsman.

Nothing further yet re any date for the work to be done. However I have had a letter from the council where they say this about fire regulations:

The LACORS guide is only advisory and since the building was converted with the benefit of Building Regulations, which have regard to fire precautions, the guide is ‘trumped’. The layout of the building is as it was at the time of conversion, with the doors into the kitchen in situ.

However this totally contradicts what Building Control told me, which was that they had no diagrams submitted with the application and therefore they could not tell whether the door was there in 2011 or not.

Somewhat shocked that 'fire guidelines' can be trumped by anything.

He says that the HMO officer is off ill, and so he can't send me the HHSRS and will do when he's back. Very frustrating..

Good news the landlord has confirmed that he plans to do the work in the Christmas holidays. He needs to source a fire proof glazed panel and so can't confirm the date yet, but he would like it done as soon as possible.

Feeling very relieved.

Good for you for not backing down.

Evalina well done you for getting this sorted. This means years of subsequent students will benefit so we should all be thanking you for taking on this battle!

Huge well done and I'm glad you ignored all the posters saying they lived in a cave during their time at uni and they were fine. Your daughter needed you to fight for this for her.
We went the legal solicitor route with our student house but with no parental guidance we were just useless and got no where and all had a year of being ill.

Great news!

How you getting on evalina?

UPDATE: Took DD back to University last week to help her move back into her room. She'd taken everything out so that the work could be done and the room painted white.

It has been done and has made a huge difference. The room is so much brighter, and just being able to open the window is lovely. The extra space has also meant she has been able to move the bed away from the corner, making the whole room look nicer. It's also much quieter, and her friends are finding they have more usable room in the kitchen/lounge too.

She is really happy, and thank you all so much for the advice and support you gave - it really helped me not to give up!

That's fantastic!

Have been following from the start. Great result mum!

Well done. The photo makes it look really nice.

Great result - well done

brilliant result. well done to you for pursuing this not only for your one child but for the next ones who will be taking this house on.

Well done Evalina, your tenacity has paid off.
Brilliant news for your dd.
You have done her proud

Yay! So pleased. Well done you and your DD.

That's brilliant news. The room looks so much better. I posted at the beginning of the thread that I would have hated to be in a windowless room.

Well done for sorting it out for her -and for ignoring all the posters who thought you were fussing about nothing

Brilliant result