It’s disruptive … expensive … and there is no demand for it ... but the government is determined that every tenant of a privately rented shared house should have a washbasin in their bedroom.

It’s the latest “excessive amenity standard” in a list that already wants six or more sharing tenants – typically young people or students - to have at least two baths and two toilets in three different compartments … plus a wash basin alongside every toilet.

“Tenants don’t expect, require or need all this and 58 out of 60 local authorities polled are against the washbasin idea,” says the Residential Landlords Association - whose members own over 100,000 private rented properties throughout the UK.

The RLA is lobbying the government to reconsider the ‘unrealistic’ washbasin element of its National Minimum Amenity Standards because, says the association’s lawyer and lobbying team leader Richard Jones: “there has been no realistic assessment on its true impact on the private rented sector.”

Major technical issues include the serious risk of overloading pressure-operated combination boilers and electric showers, damaging water mains, drainage and piping systems.

Installation disruption – which can make a house unusable for a full week – will probably involve adapting floor joists, cross bonding electricity cabling, new mains distribution for water heating, disturbing fitted furniture and laminate flooring. And there will be an inevitable loss of already restricted space leading to fewer bedrooms and less affordable accommodation at a time of housing crisis.

There are environmental issues – such as higher and more wasteful water and fuel consumption – as well as the danger of having a water installation in a young person’s bedroom typically full of electrical items such as TV, video and DVD players, computers, shavers and driers.

And the greater risk of internal flooding and freezing will worry already cautious insurance companies.

“Add to this,” says Richard Jones, “a lack of available tradesmen to carry out the work, and you see why this requirement is condemned not only by landlords faced with such unnecessary expenditure, but tenants who see no useful purpose and local authorities who have to enforce it.

“Many charities work hard to fund the delivery of a single piped water supply to a whole ‘third world’ village which may only have a fetid well to serve all its inhabitants. Here the government is insisting that every single person should have more washing facilities than they know how to cope with. Where’s the sense of proportion in that?”