Oh, also... Regarding the rent and it being uninhabitable...does that apply only to the person who's room was destroyed, or to all of us? We pay £2000 a month for this house...it's a lot of money...

Thanks Wendy, The builders have been repairing the room for the past 3 weeks but we took loads of pictures at the time of the damage to the room. At the time the agancy that half looks after the property came and said it was uninhabitable. The next day when they were phoned they said they had been instructed that the landlady would deal with everything and they were no longer to be involved. The emergency buiilder who first came round said it was unsafe to be in the room because the rest of the ceiling was not safe, also other parts of the house where there had been a water build up...for example the loft hatch which we walk under was not safe, one of the celings about the stairs... The room was totally trashed....about a six foot square area of the ceiling collapsed onto the bed...it was not remotely inhabitable. She knows we have pictures...the builders are still here as I write this and apparently they will be doing a ceiling in the room next door as well so that person will have to move somewhere as well eventually... The most the landlady has said is that she is sorry for the inconvenience but she has always played it like it was absolutely nothing major at all.

Thanks for that Rich! Sadly not, but we recorded it on a phone! This happened as soon as someone realised there was a problem but didn't realise water was coming through the light swtiches...own fault then i guess Yikes!!! That's a lot of money for a small gadget!!! I take it it doesn't matter that it wasn't generally known about... About the people coming to stay...she has no sense of our privacy...she has also decorated the house whilst we've been here, and on the pretence of coming to look at the painter's work she went into everyone's bedrooms....once she went into a bedroom having been told that someone was in there sleeping!! The only time we ever siad it wasn't convenient for her to come because no-one was going to be in she accused us of lying... The contract says we must clean any carpets, bedding and curtains that have bben soiled.....I can see that we may have to do the carpets...but the curtains??!!! Nothing about windows in the contract....and lightbulbs....isn't that what the cleaner is for!!! It says we must pay for any damage to the property caused by the guinea pigs...nothing about fumigating...surely she can't demand this when she agreed to have the guinea-pigs and we have stuck to her requirement on where we are allowed to keep them (i.e. on hard floor, no carpets) We have tried to maintain the garden which is all it says in the contract...we have already paid for someone to do it earlier in the year, it was never very tidy...we have now spent a lot of time sorting it out and it looks better than it has ever done but we know she will complain because no doubt we will have removed some plants that we think are weeds and they won't be...she is NEVER happy...but she can't demand we pay for a pro can she... As for the room....surely the lose of someone's bedrrom means she must pay back that rent for the time that person has not been able to inhabit that room...and the rest of us have lost a communal area....the contract says she must if there is damage from fire or anything else which she can claim insurance for...i.e. flood damage in this case. We know she is insured and is claiming.

We are coming to the end of our tenancy agreement with an extremely difficult landlady. We have a few issues that we'd love any advice on... A few weeks back after some heavy rain the ceiling in one of the bedrooms completely collapsed and water was pouring all through the house. As a result one of us got an electric shock from a light switch and the other light switches in the house were live for a day or two. The landlord gave us advise on how to minimise the shock and told us to use a pencil to turn switches on and off!! The room has been uninhabitable since and one of us has been living in the small lounge since then but still paying full rent. We now have builders in repairing the roof and other walls in the house. This has meant the tenant that works nights has had very disturbed sleep. Also the furniture from the collapsed room is now in someone elses room while they carry out work on the floor boards. The landlady has offered nothing in compensation for any of this and seems to regard it as a minor inconvenience for us. By the time we leave it will be ten weeks since the ceiling collapsed. In the meantime she has stated that before we go we must: Pay for a professional gardener to do the garden Pay for professional cleaners to clean the carpets (and we must vacate the house about five days before the end of the tenancy so they can do this) Have all the curtains dry-cleaned Pay for someone to clean the windows inside and outside (four-story building) Pay for the house to be fumigated for ticks and fleas because we have kept guinea-pigs which were agreed in the contract (and which have not had ticks or fleas) We must also clean all the lightbulbs!!!!!!!! By the way the contract came with a cleaner who comes once a week to do communal areas. This all seems entirely unreasonable to us. We know from the previous tenants that she held back £500 of their deposit for a carpet she didn't replace and for the cost of moving the furniture out of the room and then in again of that bedroom... One of us had their mother and sister to stay for the weekend just gone and she has also stated that they were not allowed to be here...this seemed to come from the builders who told her that there were people living here who shouldn't be!!!!! This woman has been at the house more times than we can remember....she was even here the day we moved in, literally as we were humping boxes in she was there talking about the house....at that time she talked to one of us about a timer switch which opened and closed the lounge curtain automatically...that person forgot to tell everyone else immediately and I pulled the curtains shut not knowing and broke it. Apparently they don't make them anymore so it hasn't been replaced...I know she is going to charge us for this, can she? Also the chairs we were given for the kitchen were extremely rickety...people gingerly sit down on them...during the course of the year here two have collapsed and broken just by being sat on....are we liable for them? This woman is a nightmare...she's coming round tomorrow and we'd like to know if we have any rights???? All help gratfully recieved.