It really does feel like it is open season on landlords at the moment. What with having to pay to register with national bodies and buy to let loans being so hard to get, we really could be forgiven for feeling a little hard done by.
The latest piece of bad news for landlords comes in the form of news that residential landlords could soon be forced to pay up for any water bills left unpaid by departing tenants.
This seems to have been prompted by the state of the Northumbrian Water Company’s finances this year. A report shows a 10.3 per cent fall in pre-tax profits to £152.7 million for the year to March 31. A lot of this is being blamed on bad debt with John Cuthbert, the managing director of the company, claiming that they are very vulnerable due to laws which prevent them stopping supply of water for non-payment.
I have some sympathy with this idea but fail to understand how that becomes the landlord’s problem. As landlords, we all have our own share of bad debt to deal with. It occurs to me that if a tenant has vacated without paying their water bill there is a better than even chance that they were also behind on their rent.
Why should the landlord’s misery be added to by something that is essentially someone else’s problem?
