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Problems with rented housing

Disrepair

The Private Sector Housing team can investigate serious disrepair in your rented property if you’ve reported it to your landlord and they have not dealt with the problem in a reasonable amount of time.

To protect your rights as a tenant, you must write down the problems with your rented property and provide this to your landlord or their representative (for example, managing agent or letting agent). You should do this, and give them time to respond, before making a report about disrepair to the council.

For tenants of housing associations, you should already have made your housing provider aware of the problems, and used their complaints procedure, before making a report about disrepair to the council.

You can get housing advice, including advice about disrepair in rented properties, from Shelter England.

Reporting disrepair

You can report disrepair in your rented property online.

You should describe the issue in as much detail as you can. You should also confirm that you've already reported the problem to your landlord, and they have not responded within a reasonable amount of time, or they’ve failed to deal with the problem.

You cannot report problems which only relate to the appearance of the property, for example the quality of the paintwork.

You can use Report It to make a report.

What happens next

We may need to visit your property to do an assessment of the risks and hazards to your health and safety from any possible defects.

If we find any defects, we'll contact your landlord and require them to fix any problems.

If we do not find any defects which are a risk to your health and safety, we will not take any further action.

Illegal eviction

You can tell us if you've been evicted from privately rented accommodation and you think the eviction was unlawful. Shelter has information about what counts as an unlawful eviction.

If you're going to be evicted in the near future, you can get advice from the Housing Solutions team by calling 01642 726800. Visit the Housing Solutions page for more information.

You can get housing advice, including advice about illegal eviction, from Shelter England.

Our policy

The private sector housing: standards and enforcement guide explains the processes we follow when considering or taking enforcement action in relation to breaches of private sector housing laws.