Fitness for human habitation: when is a rented home legally unfit?

Where the duty actually comes from

People usually name the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, and historically that is right. But the 2018 Act was an amending statute: it inserted the operative provisions into the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. If you want to read the law itself, the useful sections are section 9A (the landlord’s covenant), section 9B (which tenancies it applies to) and section 10 (the test for whether a home is unfit).

Section 9A imposes two obligations. The dwelling must be fit for human habitation at the time the lease is granted, and it must remain fit during the term. The first of those is the one that matters most, and the next section explains why.

Why this reaches further than Section 11

Repairing law usually requires deterioration: something must have fallen from a better condition before it can be repaired. That leaves a gap. A home that has always had severe cold bridging, inadequate ventilation, poor natural light or an unsafe internal arrangement has not deteriorated at all — there may be nothing to repair, however unpleasant it is to live there.

Quick v Taff-Ely Borough Council [1986] QB 809 is the classic illustration. The condensation was appalling, and the Court of Appeal still held that the repairing covenant did not require the landlord to improve building elements that were not themselves out of repair. Our guide to Section 11 works through that case in detail.

What makes a home legally unfit

Section 10 provides the test. A court considers the condition of the home in relation to ten matters:

• repair
• stability
• freedom from damp
• internal arrangement
• natural lighting
• ventilation
• water supply
• drainage and sanitary conveniences
• facilities for preparing and cooking food and for the disposal of waste water
• in England, any prescribed hazard

The home is unfit if it is “so far defective in one or more of those matters that it is not reasonably suitable for occupation in that condition”. That is the whole test. It is not “does this property need any repair”, and it is not “would I describe this as a bad flat”. A home can carry real defects and remain legally fit; the question is whether the condition crosses the threshold into no longer being reasonably suitable to live in.

HHSRS is one limb of the test, not the test

This is the most commonly mangled point in this area. The Housing Health and Safety Rating System is highly relevant to fitness in England — but it enters through the last of section 10’s ten matters, “any prescribed hazard”, defined by reference to section 2 of the Housing Act 2004. The other nine matters stand on their own.

So a court considering fitness can look directly at damp, ventilation, water supply, lighting or sanitation because section 10 names them. It does not have to convert every complaint into an HHSRS case first.

England now uses 21 hazards, not 29

For many years the English HHSRS contained 29 hazard categories. Current government enforcement guidance, published on 23 June 2026, describes the system as risk-based, set out in regulation, and covering “a range of 21 potential hazards” — several of the old categories having been brought together. The same reforms replaced the old ten A–J bands with three: High, Medium and Low. The Category 1 threshold is unchanged at a score of 1,000 or more, so the duties are the same even though the language used to describe a result is not. Our guide to HHSRS covers the assessment and what a council can do about it.

You do not need the council to act first

A local-authority inspection is often powerful evidence, but it is not the gateway. A court can find a home unfit under section 9A without any HHSRS assessment and without any finding of a Category 1 or Category 2 hazard.

Harvey v Heaver: what “unfit” means in practice

Harvey v Heaver [2026] EWHC 1671 (KB) is one of the first detailed High Court examinations of the modern section 9A regime, and it is the most useful modern authority on what unfitness actually means. The property suffered widespread damp and mould, water penetration, a damaged asbestos-coated ceiling, rodent infestation, septic-tank problems and heating defects. The court found it unfit, describing the damp alone as deplorable.

A home need not be dangerous to be unfit

Risk to health or safety can establish unfitness, but it is not the only route. The court confirmed the long-standing principle — from Summers v Salford Corporation and Rendlesham Estates v Barr — that conditions may cause such undue inconvenience or discomfort that the dwelling is not reasonably suitable to live in, even without a separate health or safety risk. “Unfit” is not a synonym for “immediately dangerous”.

One defect can be enough

You do not have to assemble a list. The court looks at the dwelling as a whole, and sometimes defects combine — but a single sufficiently serious defect can make the whole dwelling unfit. In Harvey the extensive damp was treated as sufficient in itself, and the damaged asbestos-containing ceiling was independently capable of the same result.

The “lifestyle” defence has a high bar

Section 9A(3) removes liability where the unfitness is wholly or mainly attributable to the tenant’s breach. Harvey treated that as a high threshold: tenant default that is a real but secondary cause will not do. The landlord’s argument about drying clothes indoors and heating habits was rejected as inconsistent with the expert evidence.

Does the landlord have to know about it first?

This needs stating carefully, because the honest answer is that it is not settled — and the unsafe course is obvious either way.

Current housing-law guidance treats landlord knowledge as normally required before liability arises for works needed during the tenancy, and a County Court has dismissed a fitness claim where the evidence of notice was lacking. But the precise relationship between the traditional common-law notice rule and section 9A has not been settled by binding appellate authority. Harvey v Heaver did not decide it: the judge confined the trial to present unfitness, and remitted historic breaches, notice, Section 11 disrepair and the section 9A(3) attribution issues to the County Court.

Notice does not mean a solicitor’s letter

A report can be given by email, text, an online repair portal, a phone call, a letter or a conversation. What matters is whether the landlord has enough information that a reasonable landlord would investigate whether work is needed. You do not have to diagnose the cause — “water runs down the bedroom wall whenever it rains and the plaster is wet and mouldy” is enough to require investigation, whether the culprit turns out to be the flashing, the gutter, the roof covering or a pipe.

The landlord may already know

Knowledge need not come from you. The landlord may have inspected, their surveyor or contractor may have seen the problem, a housing officer may have recorded it, or they may hold information sufficient to put them on inquiry. Where the landlord already knows, insisting the tenant also completed a particular form misses the legal point — but from an evidence perspective, report it clearly and keep copies anyway. Our guide to what counts as notice sets out the test, and reporting repairs has templates.

Common parts are different

Section 9A can extend to parts of the building in which the landlord has an estate or interest, where a problem there makes your own home unfit — a communal roof leaking into a flat, dangerous shared stairs, defective communal services. Where the common part is within the landlord’s own ownership or control, the law does not necessarily require you to notify them first. Where your immediate landlord does not control it — a leaseholder letting one flat in a larger block — notice becomes important again.

Fitness can require improvement, not just repair

This follows from everything above and is worth stating plainly. If an original feature was never adequate, there may be nothing to repair — it has always worked exactly as designed. But if that feature makes the dwelling unfit, work may still be required to remedy the unfitness, and that work may amount to an improvement rather than a restoration.

That is a genuine departure from traditional repairing law, and it is why the two duties have to be considered separately rather than treated as two names for the same thing.

The exceptions

Section 9A does not make a landlord responsible for every condition regardless of cause. Some exceptions mirror Section 11; two do not.

• Work the tenant owes through failing to use the premises in a tenant-like manner.
• Rebuilding or reinstating after destruction or damage by fire, storm, flood or other inevitable accident — which is not the same as an ordinary leak or a deteriorated roof.
• Keeping in repair anything the tenant is entitled to remove.
• Work that would itself put the landlord in breach of another legal obligation.
• Work requiring a third party’s consent, where that consent cannot be obtained despite reasonable endeavours.

The last two do not appear in Section 11 and matter most in flats and leasehold buildings, where remedial work may need a freeholder’s or management company’s permission. “I need the freeholder’s consent” is not the end of the matter: the landlord may need to show reasonable efforts were actually made to obtain it.

Section 9A(3) separately removes liability where the unfitness is wholly or mainly attributable to the tenant’s own breach — a high threshold, as Harvey confirms. And a landlord cannot contract out: the covenant is implied into qualifying tenancies, and a tenancy agreement can give you more protection but not less.

Access to inspect and to do the work

Section 9A contains an access mechanism closely mirroring Section 11(6). The landlord, or a person authorised in writing, may enter to view the condition and state of repair — at reasonable times of the day, and on at least 24 hours’ notice in writing.

This is an inspection right, not general permission to come and go. But a tenant complaining of serious conditions should cooperate with reasonable arrangements for inspection, surveys, contractor visits and remedial work. Repeatedly refusing reasonable access makes a dispute far harder to resolve and can affect liability. If a proposed time is impossible, offer an alternative and keep the messages.

Which tenancies are covered, and from when

Section 9B sets the scope: broadly, leases of under seven years, plus certain other kinds specified by reference to section 13, with the section 14 exceptions applying. Most ordinary private and social tenancies in England are covered. Long leases, shared ownership, licences rather than tenancies, and business or agricultural arrangements can fall outside it, so neither “every rented home is covered” nor “only leases under seven years” is accurate.

The commencement and transitional position

The regime came into force on 20 March 2019, and the start date matters a great deal if you are looking back over a long period of poor conditions.

• Tenancy granted on or after 20 March 2019: the duty generally applied from the start of the tenancy.
• Periodic or secure tenancy already in existence on 20 March 2019: covered, but after a 12-month transitional period — so from 20 March 2020.
• A periodic tenancy arising after commencement on the expiry of an earlier fixed term: covered from when the new periodic tenancy began.
• A fixed term renewed on or after commencement: treated as a new grant, so covered from the renewal.
• Tenancy granted before 20 March 2019 and not renewed: generally outside section 9A, though other duties may still have applied.

What a court can order

Section 9A is not limited to compensation. Section 9A(5) expressly preserves specific performance, so a court can order the landlord to carry out the necessary works. That matters, because for a tenant still living in the property the real problem is usually not how much money is owed — it is that the home still needs fixing.

In Harvey v Heaver the High Court made exactly such an order, defined by reference to the expert’s costed schedules of work, holding that the statutory language displaces older objections to ordering performance. Whether any particular case justifies that depends on its circumstances.

Wales uses a different system

This page is about England. Wales has its own regime under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, and the two should not be mixed. Welsh landlords must have regard to a statutory list of 29 matters and circumstances prescribed by the Renting Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) (Wales) Regulations 2022 — a prescribed list, structurally different from England’s ten-matter test with its prescribed-hazard limb.

Wales also has automatic deeming rules England does not reproduce. The Welsh regulations impose requirements about smoke alarms, carbon-monoxide alarms and electrical safety inspections, and failing to comply can cause the dwelling to be treated as unfit by operation of the regulations — regardless of whether it is physically safe.

Section 11 and fitness: the four real differences

1. The threshold

Section 11 asks what has deteriorated or stopped working. Fitness asks whether the dwelling is reasonably suitable for occupation, and requires no deterioration at all. This is the biggest difference and the reason both duties exist.

2. What is covered

Section 11 covers three repairing categories — structure and exterior; water, gas, electricity and sanitation installations; heating and hot water. Section 10 ranges across ten housing-condition matters including damp, stability, ventilation, natural light, internal arrangement and cooking facilities.

3. The exceptions

The two share several limits, but section 9A adds two: work that would breach another legal obligation, and work requiring third-party consent that cannot be obtained despite reasonable endeavours.

4. The remedy

Section 9A names specific performance in the statute, so the duty is expressly designed to get the home made fit rather than only to compensate.

And where they agree

Both can apply to the same defect — a broken boiler or a leaking roof can be disrepair and make the home unfit. Both carry an access mechanism requiring 24 hours’ written notice and a reasonable time of day. Both protect a landlord against conditions properly attributable to the tenant. And on notice, the safest assumption is that both require it, whatever the courts eventually decide about section 9A.

Worked examples

“The home has always been freezing because it was badly designed.”

The clearest illustration of the difference. If nothing has deteriorated, the design problem may not be disrepair at all. But if the cold is serious enough that the home is not reasonably suitable to live in, fitness may still reach it.

“There is mould throughout every bedroom.”

Potentially serious. A court would look at extent, cause, duration, ventilation, heating, building defects, health implications and the effect on ordinary occupation. Mould is not automatic proof of unfitness — but widespread severe damp plainly can cross the threshold, as it did in Harvey.

“The heating works, but it never makes the home warm.”

Two different questions. If the system works exactly as designed there may be no heating disrepair. Inability to achieve reasonable warmth can still matter under the fitness test, including through excess cold as a prescribed hazard.

“The landlord says the mould is my lifestyle.”

Not automatically decisive. Section 9A(3) requires the unfitness to be wholly or mainly attributable to your breach, and Harvey treated that as a high bar — a real but secondary contribution is not enough. The actual cause has to be established.

“The problem was there when I moved in.”

This is precisely where fitness is strongest. Section 9A requires the home to be fit at the beginning of the qualifying tenancy. There does not first have to be a period during which it was in good condition.