Minimum building standards

The law protects tenants against landlords who try to rent out spaces that are not suitable or safe for people to live in.

The Housing Improvement Regulations 1947 (HIR) sets out the national minimum standards, but the local council may have minimum standards that are more generous than these. If this is the case, the local council’s standards are the ones that will apply.

The national minimum standards are that a house or flat must have (cl 5 HIR):

• A living room
• A kitchen which must include a stove / oven and sink
• A bedroom
• A bathroom
• A toilet for the exclusive use of the occupants of the house (ie, not a shared bathroom)
• Adequate provision for washing clothes, if the house is designed to be for more than two or more people (otherwise, a shared laundry is enough).

If the kitchen and living area are in one room (ie, open-plan), this room must be at least 9m² if the property was built before 1947, or 14m² if it's newer.

You are also allowed a combined living room and bedroom (also known as a "bedsit"), but this room cannot be less than 11m² for one person and 14m² for two people. In a bedsit, the kitchen must be in a separate room.

Some facilities that you might expect in a house, don’t actually need to be provided under the law (though they may be able to be negotiated with the landlord). These include:

• a clothes line
• parking areas
• storage areas
• private garden spaces

Some flats include shared spaces or facilities, such as laundries, clothes lines, parking and storage areas. These can create disputes if there aren’t clear rules between the tenants over how these facilities are shared or accessed.

Shared facilities do not have to be listed as a special condition in a tenancy agreement, so it can be difficult for a tenant to know about them before they sign a tenancy agreement. If a tenant hasn’t yet signed a tenancy agreement, but is planning on moving into a property that they think may have shared facilities they could ask the landlord about this and whether there are any formal or informal rules in place about their use, or whether this is up to the tenants to decide amongst themselves.

The landlord has to take all reasonable steps to ensure that there is no "legal impediment" to the tenant living at the property at the start of the tenancy (s 36 RTA). This could include things like earlier promises or contracts to other people that mean that the tenant can’t move in (eg, an earlier tenancy hasn’t been properly terminated, so there are tenants still lawfully living there). For more information see Right to vacant possession.