Council housing disrepair claims

You rent from the council — where you stand

Renting from a council does not put you in a weaker position than other tenants when it comes to repairs — in some ways it gives you more routes. The starting point is that a council landlord generally owes the same core repairing obligations as a housing association or a private landlord. Those duties are set by law and generally cannot be reduced by anything written into your tenancy agreement.

This page does not re-explain how a disrepair claim works from first principles — for that, read how housing disrepair claims work. Here the focus is on what is genuinely different when the landlord is your local council, because several important things are.

The label on your tenancy agreement

Most established council tenants are “secure tenants” under the Housing Act 1985, which carries strong security of tenure. Newer tenants often start on a 12-month “introductory tenancy”, and some councils grant fixed-term “flexible tenancies”. The label affects your security and some of your wider rights, but it does not change the core repairing duties described below — those apply whichever kind of council tenancy you hold. It is still worth digging out your agreement, because it can add to the basic duties and it tells you which category you are in.

The repairs your council must deal with

Under section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 the council must keep in repair and proper working order:

• the structure and exterior of your home — walls, roof, foundations, external pipes, gutters and drains;
• the installations that supply water, gas and electricity — pipes, wiring, taps and stopcocks;
• sanitation — basins, sinks, baths and toilets;
• the installations for space heating and heating water — for example the boiler, radiators and any communal heating serving your home.

On top of that, in England the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 requires the home to be fit to live in at the start of and throughout the tenancy, which brings in problems such as serious damp and mould, inadequate ventilation and a home that is too cold to heat. (In Wales the equivalent fitness requirement comes through the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016.) Together these are the duties a council disrepair enquiry is usually built on.

The two hats: your council is both your landlord and the local authority

This is the single most important thing to understand about being a council tenant, and it is where council homes differ from every other kind. Your council does two separate jobs that both touch housing conditions, and it helps to keep them apart.

As your landlord, the council has the repairing and fitness duties set out above and must put right disrepair it is responsible for. As the local housing authority, the same council also runs the public system that regulates housing standards across its whole area — inspecting homes under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), brought in by the Housing Act 2004, and taking enforcement action where it finds a serious hazard.

Why Environmental Health works differently for council tenants

For a private tenant, or a housing association tenant, those two roles sit with different bodies. If the landlord will not deal with a serious hazard, the tenant can ask the council’s Environmental Health team to inspect, and where it finds the most serious (category 1) hazards the authority has a duty to take appropriate enforcement action against the landlord — an improvement notice, for example — and a discretion to act on less serious ones.

Where the council is your own landlord, that route works differently. In practice a council generally cannot serve HHSRS enforcement notices on its own housing, because it cannot easily be both the enforcing authority and the landlord being enforced against. This is a genuine gap rather than a technicality, and it is one reason council tenants tend to lean more heavily on the complaints route, the Housing Ombudsman, Awaab’s Law timescales and, where necessary, a disrepair claim in the courts than a private tenant would. It does not leave you without options — it changes which options do the work.

What this means in practice

Because you cannot rely on your own council’s enforcement team to lean on itself, the practical toolkit for a council tenant is:

• the council’s own repairs service and formal complaints process, used properly and in writing;
• the Housing Ombudsman, once that complaints process is exhausted;
• Awaab’s Law timescales for serious hazards in England;
• a housing disrepair claim, advised on by an independent solicitor, where duties have been breached.

How to report a repair to your council

A landlord generally has to know about a problem before it can be expected to fix it, and be given a reasonable time to do so. That makes the report itself one of the most valuable things in the whole file, because a later enquiry so often turns on when the council was told and what it did next.

Put it in writing and keep the reference number

Report repairs through the council’s official channel — its repairs portal or app, its repairs phone line, an email, or a letter — and always note down the repair reference number you are given. Even if you phone, follow it up in writing so there is a dated record, because a verbal report with nothing recorded is far harder to rely on later. If you have only ever reported by phone, send a short message now summarising what you reported, roughly when, and what has and has not been done since.

What to include

• your name, address and tenancy or rent account reference;
• which rooms are affected and exactly where the problem is;
• a clear description of the defect, when you first noticed it and whether it is getting worse;
• anything you think is causing it — an overflowing gutter, a leak from above, a fan that does not work;
• whether anyone in the household is a young child, elderly, pregnant, disabled or has a health condition;
• photographs or short videos, and a request for a repair reference number and a date for the work.

Our page on how to report repairs to your council in writing sets out wording you can adapt, and if requests are simply going unanswered there is a separate page on what to do when repair requests are ignored.

The Right to Repair scheme for secure council tenants

Secure council tenants have an extra statutory route that private and housing association tenants do not: the Right to Repair scheme. It is narrow and often overlooked, but it can be useful for exactly the sort of small problem that drags on for weeks.

The scheme covers certain small “qualifying repairs” that could affect the health, safety or security of the household — for example a blocked flue, an unsafe power socket, a leaking waste pipe, a broken external door lock, or no working heating in cold weather where the job is modest. If the council does not carry out a qualifying repair within the prescribed timescale, you can require it to arrange for another listed contractor to do the work, and you may be entitled to a small fixed compensation payment for the delay.

It is deliberately limited. It only applies to secure tenants, only to small qualifying repairs below a cost limit, and not to large, complex or structural works — so it is a way of unsticking minor jobs, not a substitute for a disrepair claim about serious or long-running problems. Your council should be able to tell you which of its repairs qualify and the timescales that apply.

The council’s complaints process — usually two stages

If a repair is overdue or repeated visits are not fixing it, the next step is the council’s formal complaints procedure. This is not the same as chasing the repairs line — it is a defined process with recorded stages and response times, and going through it properly builds exactly the kind of dated written record a later enquiry depends on.

Stage one

A formal complaint at stage one asks the council to look at what has gone wrong and put it right. Set out a short chronology — when you first reported the problem, the repair reference numbers, what was promised, what happened, and what is still outstanding — and say clearly what you want done. Ask for the response in writing within the council’s published timescale.

Stage two

If the stage one answer does not resolve things, you can escalate to stage two, where the complaint is reviewed at a more senior level. Keep it factual, attach your evidence, and again ask for a dated written reply. Completing both stages is normally what “exhausting the complaints process” means, and it is usually required before the Housing Ombudsman will look at a case.

Councils are expected to handle complaints in line with their own complaints policy and the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, which sets out how a two-stage process should work and the timescales for acknowledging and responding. If you are not sure of the timescales, ask for them in writing at the outset — a written trail through both stages does a great deal of the heavy lifting if the matter later goes further.

Escalating to the Housing Ombudsman

The Housing Ombudsman investigates complaints about social landlords, and councils acting as landlords are covered. If your council’s complaints process is finished and the repair problem is still not resolved, this is a free, independent route that can look at delays, poor communication, missed appointments, inadequate repairs and how the complaint itself was handled.

What that looks like in practice is public. Our Housing Disrepair Index records 21 published decisions issue by issue, including ones against Kingston upon Hull, Haringey, Lambeth, Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Medway. Each entry links to the decision itself, so you can read what the Ombudsman said and what it ordered the council to do. It is a small, deliberately selected set and not a league table.

When you can go to the Ombudsman

You generally need to have exhausted the council’s two-stage complaints process first. You no longer have to go through a councillor or MP before approaching the Ombudsman — since a change in the rules you can bring the complaint directly once the landlord’s process is complete. The Ombudsman can order a landlord to take action and to put things right, though it does not work in the same way, or to the same measures, as a court claim.

Which ombudsman deals with which hat

The two-hats point matters here too. The Housing Ombudsman deals with the council in its landlord role — repairs, the condition of your home and complaint handling. Complaints about the council in its other roles — for example a homelessness application, the housing register and allocations, or a decision by its Environmental Health team — go instead to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. If you are unsure which applies, describe the problem and either ombudsman can point you to the right one.

Awaab’s Law: timescales that apply to your council

Awaab’s Law introduces set timescales requiring social landlords in England — councils included — to investigate and deal with certain serious hazards rather than leaving them outstanding. Phase 1 has applied since 27 October 2025, covering emergency hazards and damp and mould that presents a significant risk. Phase 2 is scheduled to come into force on 30 November 2026, extending the same approach to a wider range of serious hazards, so it does not yet cover every hazard.

For a council tenant this makes the date you first reported a serious problem particularly worth pinning down, because the timescales run from when the council became aware. We set out the deadlines and how to use them in the guide to Awaab’s Law for social housing tenants.

Common problems in council homes

The defects that come up most often in council housing are the same ones that affect ageing housing stock generally. The council-specific angle is not the defect itself but the routes above — reporting, complaints, the Ombudsman and Awaab’s Law. Rather than repeat the detail, here is where each problem is covered in full.

Damp and mould

The most common dispute, and the one where councils most often reply that it is “condensation” and down to your lifestyle. That answer is not automatically correct: condensation can still be the council’s responsibility where a defect drives it, such as a broken extractor fan, vents painted shut, cold uninsulated walls or heating that does not work. How to tell the types of damp apart, and how to handle the condensation pushback, is covered on our damp and mould claims page.

Leaks, heating and structural defects

Roof leaks, failed guttering and water coming through walls or windows generally fall within the structure-and-exterior duty, and a leak from a flat above usually does too where the council owns the block. No heating or hot water, or a boiler that keeps breaking down, engages both the section 11 duty on heating installations and, in cold weather, the fitness of the home — and a total loss of heating in winter, especially where a child, an older person or someone unwell lives there, should be dealt with far faster than a minor defect. Cracked or falling plaster, damaged ceilings and signs of movement can range from cosmetic to serious; report anything that looks unsafe at once and do not disturb it. What the disruption and any damage to belongings can mean is explained on our housing disrepair compensation page.

Rent arrears do not cancel your council’s repairing duties

Owing rent does not remove the council’s duty to keep your home in repair, and a council should not leave a serious hazard unresolved because money is owed. Arrears do not automatically prevent a disrepair enquiry from being reviewed either.

They are, though, a relevant factor. Councils sometimes raise arrears in response, and any compensation may be treated as reducing what you owe rather than being paid out to you. It is important to be upfront about arrears from the start so they can be handled properly. We cover this on our page about disrepair claims when you have rent arrears.

What happens after you contact RemedyBridge

RemedyBridge is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. What we do is help you set out clearly what has happened with your council — what you reported, when, and how it responded — and, if it looks like it may be worth taking further, connect you with someone qualified to advise.

The steps

• You complete a free online assessment about the repairs, when you reported them to the council and what it did.
• A person reviews your enquiry rather than an automated score deciding it, and will say honestly if the complaints process or the Ombudsman looks like the better first step.
• Only with your permission do we introduce you to an independent solicitor.
• That solicitor makes their own decision on whether they can help and explains any funding arrangement to you directly before you commit to anything.

We cannot tell you whether you will succeed and we never say what a case might be worth. Free routes exist and are often the right first move — the council’s complaints process, the Housing Ombudsman, and independent advice from Shelter and Citizens Advice — and our free help options page lists them. Using them does not stop you asking us to review your situation later.