Body sized hole in bathroom escape – Who pays?

Reply to the comment left by Dave Driver at 28/02/2020 - 11:05
The door and the lock were functioning perfectly, until I guess suddenly they were not. We can hardly predict when this will happen with any items. No maintenance requests have been submitted for this and flat inspections were carried out just last week.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 29/02/2020 - 12:16
I know some tenants in the past at various properties have tried to fix things, because they are worried about getting charged for breaking things.

Reply to the comment left by Tej Kainth at 01/03/2020 - 19:44
Frankly I have no tolerance for this unless there were other circumstances that I do not know about such as extreme claustrophobia. If it happened to me, I would simply be patient, even if I were trapped for hours until someone else came home.

I must say, I have also experienced front door lock jamming up, locking me out a couple of times, both times I had been lucky that I managed to get in from rear kitchen door through my neighbours garden and managed to open the door from inside and then for no parent reason the lock became free without having to strip it down or calling a lock smith, just the other day my neighbours front door lock got jammed, key would turn part and not open, he asked me to help him get in through his rear kitchen door, favour returned, his lock had to be replaced , again it was possible to have it opened from inside.
Because of my own experiences, if one of my tenants got locked in, it was perfectly acceptable by me if he had to break the door down to come out of a locked toilet, but in doing so I am sure other house tenants would have heard her breaking the wall down, why did they not come to her rescue?
I also have split handle door locks to rear garden, these are same as the front door locks, where if you shut the door behind you, then you cannot open it again from the outside without a key, one tenant was drying her washing as I came in to visit this HMO, I greeted her in the garden, then as I came back in I shut the door behind me and left the premises, she could not come back in, she was in her tee shirt and weather was cold, she was indeed furious, no one else at home, she tried calling neighbors attention, but neither were they home or heard her, she did not have her phone on her to call me, so she went into the garden shed and got some garden implement and forced open a PVC double glazed window to jump back in, later on she rang me and was furious, so i apologised and said not to worry and I will get that window fixed.

Sometimes tenants get locked out when they come out to throw rubbish in the bins, the door can slam shut with a gust of wind, number of times this has happened and fortunately i live close by to let them in, in one case she also had a cooking pot on the stove.

I now add these on my tenancy agreement for them to be aware of going out to throw rubbish if they have something on the cooker, it can catch fire, always carry their key or wedge the door with something.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 02/03/2020 - 15:03
There is world of difference between the locks you describe and those used on toilet/bathroom doors.

Reply to the comment left by Paul Shears at 02/03/2020 - 15:29Of course I understand they are different, I have already discussed above how on two occasions I got trapped by bathroom door locks failing due to illthought design. I.e. recessed screw on the knob can loosen and come away from the shaft, and when you try to push it back on the shaft, the shaft just pushes out and fall out on the other side, unless someone happens to be in the house, you can be stuck for a long while.
But I also added that one can also get trapped or locked out even when you had a front door key when it becomes jammed or things within the locking mechanism malfunctions for number of reasons, including wear and tear.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 02/03/2020 - 16:28
OK.