The shared spaces around rented apartment and other private housing are to be better regulated.

Alliance MLA Kieran McCarthy will introduce his private members Bill, Apartment Developments' Management Reform Bill, to the Assembly today, when it will get its first reading.

The objective is to address what the MLA said are current inadequacies in the laws governing aspects of private properties that comprise part of multi unit developments that includes townhouses and apartments.

The current laws surrounding the maintenance of the common areas of these types of properties are not strong enough, he believes and many owners have found that the common areas are not being well maintained despite them paying fees to a management company to do this work.

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Kieran McCarthy said: "This bill should make it easier for apartment owners to ensure that management companies keep the common areas in their building in good order.

"I have been told of apartment blocks where fire doors were not in a working manner for months and could have had disastrous consequences if a fire had broken out.

"But I have also been told of the more day to day problems such as the grass in the common areas not being cuts for months in the summer despite a management company being paid fees to do so," he said, explaining that the Bill will regularise the conditions of property ownership and management to ensure that owners know all the facts about the maintenance of the common areas and will have easier legal remedies encase they are not being kept in good order.

"It will give confidence to those who sign up to buy a property in a multi unit development that they know all the details when they are asked to sign a contract with the management company.

"This Bill will ensure that apartment owners have better rights and will know that they can do something instead of paying hundreds of pounds a year for a service that may not be carried out to a sufficient extent.

"Northern Ireland is currently years behind the rest of the UK and the Republic of Ireland in this area of the law, so this will bring us up to date with our neighbouring jurisdictions."

(BMcC/KMcA)