Quite naturally, when you are choosing accommodation many things influence your choice - the location, views and facilties being just some. Few people give a second thought to whether the property they are staying in is safe or legal. Most of us would assume that they were.
Making sure holiday lets are permitted
This is an issue that applies to leasehold apartments and properties. And it is the very first question we ask any of our prosepctive clients. Does you lease allow holiday lets?
99% of leases will specifically prohibit holiday lets but many people do it any way on Air BnB and Booking.com. It matters because if an insurance company covering the whole building finds out that holiday letting is done in breach of a lease then the insurance policy can be invalidated.
All of our leasehold properties have explicit permission to do holiday lets.
Holiday Home Insurance
Anyone who does holiday letting should have proper holiday let insurance.
The majority of the properties you will see on Air BnB etc will not have proper insurance for doing holiday letting. This makes the property owner vulnerable because they would not be covered if a guest damages the property. But, more importantly, it means that there is no public liability insurance should a guest injure themselves during their stay.
We ensure that all of our properties are covered by appropriate levels of insurance - public liability insurance is generally between £2 million and £5 million. We also make sure that any public areas within apartment buildings are covered by insurance.
Safety
In October 2023 fire safety legilation changed. It became a legal requirement to have a Fire Risk Assessment and in many cases to make changes to properties. We had already put Fire Risk Assessments in place but there was still a lot of work to do in supporting our owners to do everything we could to make their properties as safe as possible.
It took a lot of time and effort as well as investment but our guests' safety always comes first.
The fire safety legislation was largely ignored by the online travel agents and as a result there are tens of thousands of properties operating illegally with no fire risk assessment and with no thought given to fire detection or prevention. Even if these properties have insurance they may well not be covered because they are in breach of the law.
Amongst the other things we do to ensure our guests' safety are ensuring that gas safety certificates are up to date, electrical certificates are up to date and small appliances are PAT tested annually.
You can tell the nature of someone by the company they keep
This old saying is so very true and it is doubly so when it comes to business. Through the Muntham Apartments we are members of PASC (The Professional Association of Self Caterers) who work tirelessly to raise standards in our industry. They have amazing connections with Government and are able to lobby and represent to ensure that any changes are workable, fair and sensible.
In 2023, they spent much of the year ensuring that all their members had all the information they needed as the Fire Safety Changes arrived on 1st October. We were therefore prepared well ahead of time.
Our continued membership means that we will always have a ready source of information and support when it comes to changes in our industry.
Posted By
Torquay Holiday Lettings
29th February, 2024Other News
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Muntham Holiday Apartments
Barrington Road, Wellswood
Torquay, Devon
TQ1 1SG
Muntham Holiday Apartments
Barrington Road, Wellswood
Torquay, Devon
TQ1 1SG
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