Tenants are being charged additional fees – for cooking, washing clothes, or having visitors– it has been claimed.

Stories in the Mail and Guardian link the extra charges with ‘appointment-making’ agents that, unlike letting agents, charge tenants and not landlords.

One tenant claimed that she paid such an agent £110 as an upfront fee. EYE has invited the agent concerned to comment.

The same tenant also claimed one landlord told her she would charged every time she cooked or did laundry.

Two other landlords said she would not be allowed visitors “unless I paid them £10 every time someone came to see me”.

Dan Wilson Craw, policy officer at campaign group Generation Rent, said: “Paying an upfront fee before seeing a single property, let alone agreeing a tenancy, is full of risk.

“To learn that you might then be asked to pay extra for everyday behaviour like having a partner stay over or cooking a meal is shocking.”

It is not clear from the newspaper reports whether the landlords charging for ‘extras’ were live-in landlords looking for flatmates.