Tribunal adjudicator Michael Brennan<\/a> acknowledged tenants were responsible for water usage under the Residential Tenancies Act but stressed landlords were obliged to provide invoices promptly and to clearly identify how much water was used.<\/p>\n\u201cIt is plainly incumbent on a landlord to set out with clarity what it is that he claims is due, as and when it falls due, and, when it comes to water, to provide the bills to the tenant as they fall due, so that the tenant may make any challenge to the supplier that he thinks is appropriate and make arrangements for payment in a timely fashion,\u201d Brennan said, referring to a relevant district court case.<\/p>\n
Asking tenants to pay after the event with no opportunity to check the calculation, or to make provision for payment at the time, puts them at a \u201cmanifest disadvantage\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
It was the landlord\u2019s obligation to supply the water rates accounts to the tenant and that obligation couldn\u2019t be deflected by saying that the tenant was aware of their responsibility to pay such outgoings and\/or did not raise the issue, Brennan said.<\/p>\n
He also noted the claim included fixed charges, which remain the owner\u2019s responsibility regardless of occupancy. Combined with the lengthy delay, this made the demand unreasonable, he said.<\/p>\n
The lack of water bills was not due to any fault of the tenant, Brennan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe invoices clearly record over time an increasing amount of water costs due to unpaid bills. It was open to the landlords to respond to this.\u201d<\/p>\n
While there would have been water consumption during the tenancy, the landlord\u2019s failure to issue invoices and the lengthy delay had created an inequitable situation, the adjudicator said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was, by all other accounts, a good tenancy. It ended, the tenant received his bond and everyone had moved on,\u201d Brennan said.<\/p>\n
Approached for further comment, the agent claimed the Body Corporate failed to send any water bills to the tenant or to notify either the tenant or it, as the landlord\u2019s representative, regarding the water charges.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is highly unusual, as it is standard practice for a water supplier to issue reminders, refer unpaid accounts to debt collection or contact the Body Corporate to clarify the reason for non-payment if bills remain outstanding for more than three months,\u201d an agency representative said.<\/p>\n
The agency was disputing the matter with the Body Corporate and planned to seek reimbursement from it through the Disputes Tribunal, the representative said.<\/p>\n
Sarah Curtis is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on a wide range of issues. She has nearly 20 years\u2019 experience in journalism, most of which she spent court reporting in Gisborne and on the East Coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tenant maintained he shouldn\u2019t be accountable for the water rates bills that were neither presented during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,9092,5750,1863,1558,1873,2741,29845,6376,2740,71,42,38530,3234,32033,43,19257,6122,22400,10050,8229,40,38,41,39,6847,35967,90011,376],"class_list":["post-130410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-against","tag-application","tag-back","tag-been","tag-charges","tag-claim","tag-claw","tag-dismissed","tag-former","tag-from","tag-headlines","tag-landlords","tag-months","tag-moved","tag-news","tag-rate","tag-rules","tag-tenancy","tag-tenant","tag-they","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tribunal","tag-unfair","tag-untimely","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}