Proposed new legislation from the EU could force UK landlords to convert rental properties for disabled tenants that they don’t have. That could mean fitting houses with entrance ramps, wider doors, grab rails, stairlifts, signs in Braille, redesigning bathrooms and kitchens and even repositioning electricity sockets as if they were tenanted by disabled people, even if they were not.

“This is particularly wasteful and excessive when landlords cannot possibly know in advance what work may be needed to cater for a tenant who, in most cases, will probably never appear anyway,” says Richard Jones, lawyer and secretary of the Residential Landlords Association – whose members own over 100,000 private rented properties throughout the UK. The RLA has asked the European Union to think again.

Their response, part of a consultation on a proposed directive, asks: “how much would all this cost, who pays for it, and is it really necessary in the first place?”

Sensible questions!

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