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Landlords must provide kitchen and cooking facilities, say MPs

An all-party group of MPs looking into the subject of hunger has written to government ministers urging that landlords who fail to provide basic cooking and kitchen facilities should have their licences revoked and be banned from letting property.

The MPs’ group says basic facilities such as a refrigerator and at least a two-ring cooking hob should be regarded as the minimum requirement that landlords can provide for tenants - without them, the landlords should be be considered as capable of accommodating tenants in receipt of housing benefit.

The Guardian newspaper says this will be one of a series of recommendations included in a six-month progress report on the all-party Feeding Britain anti-poverty group. 

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Last year a report by the group, reported to have been funded by the Church of England, advocated 77 initiatives aimed at stopping the need for food banks and making the social security system more efficient. 

The Guardian says the latest interim Feeding Britain report notes that some low-income tenants were unable to prepare healthy meals because their kitchens were poorly equipped, because they could not afford to switch on gas or electricity to cook, or because they lacked basic cooking and food management skills.

The latest report, to be published later this week, criticises the Department for Work and Pensions for failing to act swiftly on promises made last year to trial simple improvements to the benefits system, which it claims would halve demand for food banks overnight

It says the DWP has yet to say when it will pilot changes such as speeding up the time taken to process benefits, which can often take weeks, and introducing a yellow-card warning system to claimants at risk of having their benefits sanctioned.

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    It beggars belief that MPs genuinely believe that landlords should provide these facilities.

    This is a very small part of the PRS.

    If you speak to landlords who operate at this end of the market, they will tell you that if you provide these items, tenants will damage or steal them and you can't recover it from their deposit because they default on their last payments too.

    Others, also have their own fridges & cookers that they like to bring, so what happens to the white goods that a landlord has been forced to provide.

    Presumably if tenants can't cook then landlords will also become responsible for paying for cooking lessons too?

    Its just more ill-thought out nonsense from the nanny state.

  • Kenny Sahota

    It's utterly ridiculous that this isn't already a requirement for landlords. It's fantastic that steps are finally being made to help feed everyone.

  • Jon  Tarrey

    Yes, let's let all these pesky tenant starve because we're too tight to provide kitchen and cooking facilities. A basic requisite of any rental property should be the provision of a fridge, oven and hob. Is that really too much to ask?

    I'd rather have a nanny state than people going hungry because of penny-pinching landlords, Mr Muir. Your attempted defence is pretty ludicrous.

  • Michael Lamoureux

    Hmmm starved to death or smothered by nanny state? Its a tough call, I think I will side with Ian because if your anything like me you can move your camping stove from A to B pretty easily.

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