Posted By Tracey C Could somebody help with the following dilemma. We run student accommodation, bit buildings like university but our students come under a assured short hold tenancy agreement like residents in blocks of flats and not licence agreements that universities have. Students under a licence agreement can be fined or easily evicted by the landlord ours cannot as we have to go to court to get them out and we cannot fine them or gain entry to their flat without prior notice and we cannot do too many inspections as we will be spoiling their quiet time. We have received a warning from the fire service because of the amount of faulse alarms they have received recently caused by human error students candles cooking etc. The building in question is attached to the fire service so they attend all false alarms, they want us to cancel this monitoring service to stop the false alarms but the building is not manned out of hours putting the students at risk. Can anybody give me some advice please.

Posted By Lilian McCartney Do these properties omce under Houses of multiple Occupation, HMO's? If so you'll know they require to be licenced but I feel the problem you have here is the way the accomodation is being used. I think (from the posting) it sounds like the Fire Brigade are wanting to remove the system from a Collecting Station to avoid these wrong calls and this would mean that 999 would defintely have to be called in an emergency. Your insurance ocmpany may have something to say about this. I reckon you have a touchy subject here which the answer is going to be to be a bit harder on the students. When presenting this case to the management include the insurance persepctive and also the fact that the Fire and Rescue Services can fine for persistent wrong alarms which caould have been prevented. I'd point out the risk involved with removing the collecting station faciltity as this may result (especially in premsies with client group you describe) putting others at higher risk. Good luck

Posted By Bob Youel landlords have duties irrespective of the specific tenant agreements & yes re an agreement such as yours you CAN act quickly where people are not adhering to their agreement in high risk situations - I know as I own and manage such property & advise others re the same politics must be looked at in the 'cold light of day' as that is what a judge would look at in a court students over 18 are adullts and should be treated as such - as for study time I have never known one group of students to tip toe whilst another group studies students cannot muck the private sector about with the same tenant agreements yes communicate and try to educate etc but you must also manage

Posted By Crim Lighted candles are the cause of so many fatal fires that they should be banned from domestic premises. I understand the view of the local fire brigade as they are obviously experienced at dealing with such fatal fires. You should begin by following their advice and notifying all occupants that candles are not to be used and any breach of this safety rule will result in eviction. It is not the person who lights the candle that I'm concerned about it is the other building occupants, not to mention the firefighters who attend the resulting fire and have to carry out rescue attempts. Once candles have been removed as a risk you can then review and see if there are still false alarms. Fire brigades should not demand disconnection of the linked fire alarms but I understand they will if their advice is ignored. "GRASP THE NETTLE" as life depends upon it.

Posted By Tracey C We took advice from the fire service for the activation. Heat detectors in the kitchen and bedrooms, smoke detection in the hallway/corridor. We state in our tenancy agreement no candles and we take photo's of previous fires we have had hoping it will wake the students up a bit to the problems. I think if we tried to take a student to court for having candles in their bedroom we would loose. It is hard enough trying to go to court with an Assured shorthold tenancy as it is! I want the fire service to take the person who persistantly causes the problem to court, but they won't they want to take us the landlord to court but we can only manage our accommodation to a certain extent. We hold inductions when students first move in with the fire authority and send posters and information to the students throughout the year. We have also tried to send letters to the parents but was told by our legal team this is unlawful we cannot do it. What else can we do?

Posted By Crim Tracey, I hope you never have to attend a Coroner's Court following a fire death in your accommodation resulting from the use of candles! Remember prevention is better than cure!

Posted By Bob Youel get a competent legal team as the one you use at present does not appear to be competent re these areas poppy-cock to their advice as its a criminal offence if you do not manage properly & sending out info is part of a managing process

Posted By Tracey C Many thanks to all of you that responded to my dilemma. Yours thoughts and advice is very much appreciated. The false alarms are being caused by students propping doors open when cooking then the smoke reaches the smoke detector in the hallway, but at Christmas we had 2 candle fires this is why the fire service have picked up on these. During the fires they were contained to a bedroom and the buidling acted as it should nobody was injured. The fire service are putting pressure on us to evict but we are trying to tell them this won't work because of the way the tenancy agreement acts in court. We are asking for their help but they just keep putting the problem back at our door.

Posted By shaun mckeever Tracey I think I may be able to help. I have had several dealings with various fire services on behalf of our clients who manage several student accommodation areas up and down the country. They had similar problems to the ones you are describing. I will need a little more information and would be happy to discuss with you on a non-commercial basis. Please email me and I will provide you with my contact details. Regards Shaun

Posted By shaun mckeever Some of the comments above about removing candles I believe are unrealistic. As stated in my previous posting above, I have acted on behalf of others who manage student accommodation from Lancaster down to Plymouth. Over 150 buildings. There is no way you are going to get compliance from students, it doesn't matter how many letters you send. They don't care when they are under the influence of drugs and alcohol. To many it is a big laugh. I have followed up reports of students who have been heavily fined for a breach of the rules. Daddy pays the bill. Eviction works but it can be such a long process. This does not mean that letters should not be sent but don't think it will solve the problem. It needs far more lateral thinking than that. Andy Brazier above has touched upon part of the solution

Posted By Sam Wade Crim I'm talking about a hob extractor, similar to the ones that most of us have over our cookers. I'm not talking about industrial strength welding fume extraction. It might minimise the need for students to prop their doors open to get rid of cooking smells, smoke, etc.......

Posted By Peter Leese It might be a silly question to you Crim, but I'd like to know the answer. If there isn't a satisfactory answer, then perhaps we need to be looking at other ways that do not infringe on the tenant's freedom. Reasonable now?