Landlord entering house without permission

CaoimheCweeva

My boyfriend and I live in college student accommodation that is also rented out during the summer months. It's a small house with 5 other bedrooms. There is no lease agreement because it's not a proper apartment - he didn't ask for a security deposit and no accommodation contract was given. We didn't really see the need for it, as our landlord is around the property daily and is easy to contact by phone.
However, when we first moved in we felt there was a problem with him coming and out as he pleases. When he showed us our room for a viewing, he didn't ask the person living there at the time for permission, he just knocked and then went in. When we moved in we were in the kitchen and he came in, and told us he had left our other key in our room. One of the girls we live with told us she had come out of the shower and she heard him coming into her room. A guy who lived here from May until recently was living here when girls for the academic year were still here and they told him about the landlord coming in and out of their rooms all the time. I've heard him come in and use the toilet that's under the stairs. One of the girls told us yesterday that she was in her room with a few friends and he unlocked it and pushed it open, but when he heard them in there he stopped and knocked.
He has a guy who works for him, he paints the outside of the houses, and a couple of weeks ago he was needing to paint the outside of the windows. The landlord told him to only do it when nobody was in the room, so not to disturb us, and gave him a key fob. The guy then came into our room without knocking. He also has a girl who works for him, I'm not sure what she does but she came to our house yesterday and said she needed to go around making sure the key fob receivers still worked. She told us that they were going to be going around to the rooms to see if they needed to be repainted, but that the landlord would be sending out emails letting us know. We were gone for a few hours this morning, and when we came back she was just leaving. I asked if she had checked the rooms and she said only to measure our beds and shower heads (??). We were given no notice of this.
I'm not too sure if this is allowed or not, as I said we didn't sign anything and there is no contract for me to check. Surely it still isn't allowed? I think it's different during the academic year in student accom., but surely during the summer you get people of all ages and you can't do this? I'm still paying money to live here and I'm allowed do it without having to worry of being walked in on naked
I want to say something to him but I'm not a very confrontational person and sadly my boyfriend isn't either. It seems nobody who lives in any of the houses are confrontational as he keeps doing it.. or maybe it's just my house.

Any help on this would be great!

Eldarion

Sounds like you have a licensee agreement here since no lease has been signed. In the eyes of the law you are little better off than a guest in his house. As such you have little to no rights in this case.

That being said I've had licensee agreements and I wouldn't invade people's privacy the way this landlord is doing without there being an emergency. Unfortunately he's not breaking any laws or breaching any contracts by doing so. You could approach him civilly and ask him to respect your privacy but if he's been carrying on like this for a long time he may get his back up about it.

My advice would be to start looking elsewhere. Somewhere with a real landlord / tenancy agreement that gives you have rights over the property. Of course that comes with deposit requirements and lease responsibilities but I think you can see yourself now that leases benefit both parties.