Housing Repairs and Rents Act 1954

37 Application of Rent Acts to dwellings provided or improved with assistance under Part II of Housing Act, 1949

(1) Subject to the provisions of this section the duty of the local authority, under section twenty-two of the Housing Act, 1949, where application is made for a grant under that Act to fix a maximum rent for dwellings provided or improved by works in respect of which such a grant will be payable shall as respects applications approved after the commencement of this Act extend to every dwelling so provided or improved which is, or on a letting thereof would become, a dwelling-house to which the Act of 1920 applies.

(2) Where on an application approved after the commencement of this Act the local authority fix a maximum rent under the said section twenty-two as respects any such dwelling as aforesaid, then as from the date specified in the next following subsection or the date on which the Rent Acts become applicable to the dwelling in question, whichever is the later,—

(a) those Acts shall apply to the dwelling as if the standard rent thereof had been fixed by a letting from the date specified in the next following subsection at a rent equal to the maximum so fixed and on any terms or conditions specified in the application, but on no other terms or conditions; and

(b) without prejudice to the generality of the last foregoing paragraph paragraphs (c) and (d) of subsection (1) of section two of the Act of 1920 (which permit increases of fifteen and twenty-five per cent. respectively of the net rent) shall not apply.

(3) The date hereinbefore referred to is the date on which the local authority certify that the improvement works to which the application in question related have been completed to their satisfaction:

Provided that no increase of rent shall be recoverable by virtue of the last foregoing subsection until, or in respect of any period prior to, the expiry of one clear week after the landlord has served on the tenant a notice in the prescribed form stating the amount of the standard rent fixed by the local authority and that the local authority have certified as aforesaid, but subject as aforesaid any such increase shall be recoverable notwithstanding anything in the terms of the tenancy or statutory tenancy or any enactment.

(4) The said section twenty-two shall not apply where before the approval of the application for a grant the tribunal under section one of the Act of 1949 has determined what is a reasonable rent for the dwelling.

(5) Paragraph (c) of subsection (1) of section twenty-three of the Housing Act, 1949 (which contains provisions for limiting rents) shall not apply to a controlled tenancy ; and the condition required to be observed by paragraph (b) of that subsection (which makes it a condition of any letting that the dwelling shall, subject to certain exceptions, be let or kept available for letting at a rent not exceeding the maximum rent payable under the said paragraph (c)) shall be deemed to be observed so long as the dwelling is let on a controlled tenancy or kept available for being so let.

(6) Where the standard rent of a dwelling is ascertained in accordance with subsection (2) of this section, and the standard rent of any part thereof falls to be ascertained by apportionment, it shall be ascertained by apportionment of the standard rent of the dwelling notwithstanding that the dwelling forms part of other premises which have previously been let.

(7) The proviso to paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of section two of the Act of 1920 (under which a permitted increase of rent in respect of an improvement may be suspended or reduced on the ground of unnecessary expenditure) shall not apply to any increase authorised by that paragraph in respect of so much of the approved expense of executing works in respect of which an improvement grant is made under section twenty of the Housing Act, 1949 (or, as the case may be, of the approved proportion of that expense) as falls to be borne by the applicant for the improvement grant.