UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi
Back in December 2014 the Central Heating in my Rental Property packed in due to a leak in the central heating system.
I immediately contacted the Boiler Insurance people and they came within 48 hours.
The Engineer stated Boiler was fine but there was a Leak in the system somewhere. My letting agent stated he would get his usual Plumber to have a look, which he did and initially got system working again.
48 hours later the system failed again and the Plumber called again to re-pressurise and get boiler going again.
A couple of days later it failed yet again and it was discovered there was a leak on a thermostat that was immediately replaced.
As soon as my letting agent contacted me with the problem I acted as fast as possible and even offered alternate heating (a few electric fires) to tide my Tenant over until the fault was found.
Now some 5 months on the Tenant has requested 1 weeks rental to be refunded for the lack of heating in December and stated she mentioned this to my Letting agent at the time.
Should I give this refund as it wasn't a week without heating and the family didn't have to move out.
Whilst I sympathise for the lack of heating, I did all I could possibly do at the time.
Also this last months rent was 3 weeks late and I have just discovered she has had 2 Pets In the property since December, which goes against her rental agreement which states no Pets without consent of Landlord who is entitled to increase rent if permission is granted.
As I am new to the rental business I don't know what to do for the best.
Any advise would be most welcome.

If my Tenants suffer a pretty bad inconvenience then I always try to get in with a compensation offer before I receive any request from them. Compensation might be £s, it might be a bottle of wine.

I've had a complete boiler failure and replacement before... happened Friday, new boiler installed the following Thursday. As a Landlord you must be repairing things in a "reasonable time"... that is not quantified on purpose. Just less than a week in May (when it happened to me) is fine. In December it might be, it might not be.

You have to decide, but there is no obligation. Things break. Things need repairing. It takes time to investigate and resolve... that's just life. Tenants aren't insulated from that just by virtue of the fact they're Tenants.

If the Tenancy is periodic I would probably be serving a Section 21 about now.

In the words of Zammo off of Grange Hill.... Just say no.