UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hello
I am seeking some advice as to the health dangers of a leaking oil pipe that has been leaking into soil for over a year and the really bad smell of the fumes especially in the warm weather.
The area is close to a ground floor bedroom and the fumes have been overpowering at times.
The person living in the bedroom has a Cpap machine and has lung disease and was told by a respiratory assistant at the hospital that the fumes may not have affected them per se but the fact that the Cpap machine pumps air from the room straight into the lungs it would have had an impact since the fumes from the room were being pumped directly into his lungs as  the whole place stinks of Parasene/Kerosene.
Also can you tell me is it legal to have an oil tank up against a wooden fence with no fire boarding in place.
There has also been a boiler discharging straight into our houses air bricks and the fumes from that have been so bad that the air bricks inside have had to be packed with packing tape to alleviate the smell in the front room. We have had sore throats, runny sore eyes, coughs, feeling nauseous and just generally muzzy headed. The oil leak has been going on for a year the discharging boiler for the whole of the 10 years we've been here. We are tenants of an HA and next door is owned and privately rented out. We have contacted our landlord many many times and he fobs us off saying he can't find the owner of the property etc. We found him in one day on the internet. Also our landlord sent Building Control round who said 'never seen anything like this not passing the buck but go back to your landlord'. He never bothered to contact Environmental Health.
Our landlord has shown no duty of care to his tenants even though he has been aware. He just kept saying he couldn't contact the owner of the other house to get anything done. We said ok we will take it to law after finding out how dangerous the fumes can be. Suddenly within 5 days everything is sorted. We think it's because we were prepared to force the landlords hand. But our landlord a well known housing association left us to suffer for 10 years with this boiler and nigh on 12 months with the oil leak and did nothing even though we provided photos, videos and wrote regularly to them. We have now found out that there were issues with next doors boiler discharging even before we moved here, and the first time our landlord contacted the owner next door was almost 6 months after the pipe started leaking. He now says we have to sort out the fireboarding for next door ourselves and that our health problems are a private matter between us and next door as he is just a 'Provider'.
We feel we have a case for compensation as we have really suffered.
Please can you advise?

On whose property is the leaking oil tank?  The person who owns that property is the person who will be liable.  Your landlord is not responsible for your neighbour's negligence.

I agree with that but my landlord says he doesn't owe me a duty of care.
The oil pipe is in our garden. While we were at work our neighbour came and put an oil pipe on the wall of his extension which he has built on the boundary and then poked the oil pipe through my fence back into his garden to his tank which he has put against my wooden fence.
I got on to EH who told me it's my landlords duty to protect his property from combustion and by default protect us but my landlord tells me I have to sort out the fire boarding. It's not my property and I  have no power to make my neighbour make it safe as I am only the tenant.
As to our health, we would never have got so ill if our landlord had sorted this out within a couple of months, not a year of steaming oil in the hot weather and 10 years of a boiler discharging into our front room.

Your landlord certainly does owe you a duty of care; landlords owe several kinds of duty of care to their tenants.  But the matter as you've described it here boils down to applying the rule in Rylands vs Fletcher.  You probably do have a valid claim for compensation but it will be against the person who is responsible for installing and maintaining the oil tank.  You should be able to find a solicitor who'll take the case on a no win no fee basis.

Thank you for your help. It really has made us ill. The oil pipe shouldn't even be in our garden and we e asked the landlord to get it moved but he just says well he's built the extension on the boundary and that's it, although he did admit that the oil leak has probably perpetrated his footings if the extension, just 3 metres from our downstairs bedroom.
We came home and the back gate was hanging off the wall, had been forced and the pipe was in. We got a crime number and told our landlord, we are still waiting for a visit from their ASB officer some 12 months on. We have a stream at the front of the house and the oil has properly seeped through into that too, but again, nobody wants to know.
It's pretty appalling,

What I have gotten from reading this is the following... the OP refers to "the Landord" and "our Landlord"... but the situation is actually that this is not a one-man-band who's possibly winging-it and playing-it-by-ear... the Landlord is actually a Housing Association, an organisation... and although the rules shouldn't be different, you've got to assume they're taken a proper view of their obligations and when they've come back and said there's nothing to do, you'd expect they'll be pretty damn sure of that... this is not a fellow just saying "not me, guv'nor" because he's completely unaware of how things should work... this is a company and they'll surely have checked into things. So if they say there's nothing to do - maybe it's a fact?

That doesn't help the OP, of course... but it seems the OP doesn't really want to accept this state of affairs and is looking for a means of challenging it... and I can't help there. The OP is fighting for a cause... obviously... but if things are truly that bad and health is truly at risk... then why is the OP still there? One of the [many] benefits of renting property is that you can effectively vote with your feet. Move on, 'cos it's time to groove on, and leave the Landlord / HA with this lemon, trying to let it out to some other sucker.

Most Housing Association tenants can't move.  They're generally either low paid or unwaged, and the subsidized rents trap them.

I would love to move if I could but I'm severely disabled and my husband is elderly with ill health. We have no choices left open to us I'm afraid. And I'm sorry to say that my Landlords representative did not do what he should of that is why after telling me to sort it out, I wrote to him asking him to confirm what we discussed and what he said. His reply was 'I will have to check with my colleagues'. He promised to give me the paperwork also to enable me to sort it out but after almost 4 weeks, no replies, no paperwork not even to a Subject Access or an FOI which was breached last week.
After discussing these problems with a citizen advocate, the 10 year boiler problem and the year of a leaking pipe was sorted in 5 days.
But if my landlord had acted in a timely and expedient manner we would have been spared months/years of misery.
Thank you all of you for your help and opinions. I had never rented until I became  a tenant here, so it's been a learning curve.

I have an update, I asked Environmental Health to attend the property as the landlords rep still refused to accept the notes I took at the meeting were correct or not. They attended and said surely the landlord has checked his  insurance to make sure everything is legal. No answer from him. And after emailing once more asking him to confirm my notes were accurate or not, he added he had done his best, especially by emailing next doors owner 6 months after he received a video of the leaking pipe  and yes they were accurate.
I sent his reply and the note to EH including the part where he tells m3 all my problems are between next door and me as it a private matter including the fact we have no fireboarding in situ and that he was just a provider and did not owe me a duty of care.
I had an email from EH today, apparently he is now getting a surveyor in to check the land. He's obviously got the wind up as Oftec have been in touch and said EH should have been involved from day one especially over the mopping up operation.
Btw the soil still steams in warm weather. I have taken the soil today to my doctor and he has noted how it smells of diesel and that it would have added to our breathing problems being just 3 metres from our bedroom.
He too said all this is late in the day and should have been dealt with a year ago. They should have done their job, not left it to me.
Thank you to everyone who has helped with advice.