Housing association disrepair claims

Renting from a housing association: where you stand

This page is for people who rent their home from a housing association and are struggling to get repairs done. It explains the routes open to you — the two-stage complaints process, the free Housing Ombudsman, your council’s Environmental Health team and, separately, a possible legal claim — as they apply specifically to housing association tenants. For what a disrepair claim is and who can bring one, start with our overview of housing disrepair claims.

What a housing association actually is

A housing association is a registered provider of social housing — the term now used under the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 — and you may still see the older label registered social landlord. Associations are usually not-for-profit bodies that own and manage affordable rented homes. In regulatory terms they are private registered providers, and that word private matters: it makes them separate bodies from your local council, even though both are social landlords with the same core repairing duties.

Your tenancy is probably assured, not secure

Most housing association tenants hold an assured tenancy under the Housing Act 1988, and starter or probationary tenancies are usually assured shorthold tenancies that become assured once the probationary period ends. The private rented sector moved to the new assured periodic regime on 1 May 2026. If your housing association is a private registered provider and your tenancy is an assured tenancy of social housing, the Government’s current timetable is expected to keep that framework under the earlier rules until the social-housing assured-tenancy reforms commence — currently expected in October 2027. Other housing-association arrangements, including non-social-housing tenancies, can be subject to different rules, so check current guidance for the position that applies to you. This is separate again from council tenants, who tend to hold a secure tenancy under the Housing Act 1985 (a regime these assured-tenancy reforms do not change). None of this changes the core repairing duties, which apply either way. If you actually rent from the council, read our council housing disrepair page instead.

The repairs your housing association is responsible for

A housing association owes the same core repairing duties as any residential landlord. They come from the law, not just your tenancy, and cannot be signed away by anything written into your agreement. We keep them brief here; for the detailed statutory picture in England — section 11, the fitness duty and how notice works — see our page on housing disrepair claims in England.

The core duties in outline

• Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 generally makes the association responsible for the structure and exterior of your home, and for the installations that supply water, gas, electricity and sanitation, and those for space heating and heating water; it applies to the periodic and shorter fixed-term tenancies most social tenants hold.
• The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 requires the home to be fit for human habitation at the start of, and throughout, the tenancies it covers, which can catch problems — such as severe condensation damp from poor ventilation — that are not strictly disrepair.
• Councils assess serious hazards using the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), which is a public enforcement route rather than a compensation route — and, for housing association tenants, one that is genuinely available (see below).

What is usually outside the duty

Damage caused by you, your household or a visitor, items you fitted yourself, and ordinary decorative wear are generally outside the association’s repairing duty. Communal parts of a block are often covered, but responsibility can depend on the building and your agreement. Because the boundaries are genuinely arguable, they are among the first things a specialist checks.

The duty usually starts when you report the problem

For defects inside your home, the association is generally only in breach once it knows about the problem and then fails to put it right within a reasonable time. That makes the date you reported it, and whether you can prove you reported it, central to any claim. The next section explains how to create that record.

How to report repairs to your housing association

Housing associations usually offer several ways to report a repair — an online portal or app, a repairs phone line, email, or a local office. Whichever you use, aim for the same thing: a dated, written record of what you reported and when.

Put every report in writing

A portal or app message, an email or a letter is far easier to rely on later than a phone call, because it is dated and cannot simply be denied. Describe the problem clearly, say which room it affects and how it affects your household, keep a copy, and note the repair reference or job number the association gives you. When a contractor visits, jot down who came, when, and what they did or promised. These small records are exactly what a later complaint or claim depends on.

If you have only ever phoned

If your reports have all been by phone, put the history in writing now — a short email or portal message summarising what you reported, roughly when, and what has or has not happened since. That creates a dated record going forward even if the earlier calls were never logged. Our guide on reporting repairs to your landlord explains how to do this well.

The housing association’s two-stage complaints process

If repairs are overdue or a report has been ignored, the next step is the association’s formal complaints procedure. This is separate from logging a repair — it is a complaint about how the association has handled things — and completing it is what unlocks the Housing Ombudsman.

When to raise a formal complaint

Raise a complaint once repairs are clearly overdue against the association’s own timescales, when repeated visits have not fixed the underlying problem, or when reports are going unanswered. You do not have to wait indefinitely: a complaint puts the association on formal notice and starts a clock you can later show the Ombudsman.

Stage one and stage two

Housing associations must run a two-stage complaints process that follows the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, which has been statutory since 1 April 2024. In outline, the association should acknowledge your complaint, investigate it and respond in writing at stage one, and — if you remain dissatisfied — review it at stage two, each within the timescales the Code sets. If the stage-one answer does not resolve things, ask in writing to escalate to stage two.

What a good complaint contains

• A clear list of the repairs you reported, with the dates and reference numbers.
• What the association did or did not do in response, and how long it has taken.
• The effect on your household — rooms you cannot use, damaged belongings, any effect on health.
• What you want the association to do to put things right.

Escalating to the Housing Ombudsman

The Housing Ombudsman Service investigates complaints about landlords that belong to its scheme, and housing associations are required members as registered providers of social housing. It is free to use and independent of your association.

Its decisions are published, and we have read a set of them line by line. Our Housing Disrepair Index records what the Ombudsman found in 21 decisions about damp, leaks, heating and pests — issue by issue, with the orders it made and a link to every decision. Most of the landlords in it are housing associations. It is a small, deliberately chosen set rather than a representative sample, so it will not tell you what is likely to happen in your case, but it does show what the process actually produces.

Complete the complaints process first

The Ombudsman normally expects you to have taken your complaint through the association’s own two-stage process to its final response before it will investigate. If the association is not moving your complaint through its stages, or is unreasonably delaying, that failure is itself something the Ombudsman can look at.

When to go to the Ombudsman

Refer the matter to the Ombudsman promptly after the final response — generally within twelve months, though you should check the current scheme terms. Bring your complaint file, your reporting history and your evidence with you: the stronger your written record, the more the Ombudsman has to work with.

What the Ombudsman can and cannot do

The Ombudsman can find maladministration and order the association to apologise, carry out works and pay compensation. That is not the same as a court judgment on a legal disrepair claim, and the two routes are approached differently. Many tenants use the Ombudsman to get repairs done; some also take legal advice about a claim.

The Regulator of Social Housing and its consumer standards

Housing associations are also overseen by the Regulator of Social Housing, which sets standards that registered providers must meet. Since the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 the regulator has taken a more active role in checking that landlords deliver for tenants, including inspections of larger providers and stronger enforcement powers.

The consumer standards, including the Safety and Quality Standard

The regulator’s consumer standards set out what registered providers must do for tenants. The Safety and Quality Standard, for example, expects providers to offer safe, good-quality homes, to meet health and safety requirements, to keep an accurate, up-to-date understanding of the condition of their homes, and to deal with hazards such as damp and mould. Other consumer standards cover transparency and accountability, the neighbourhood and community, and how tenancies are managed.

Why the regulator is not your individual redress route

The regulator focuses on how a landlord runs its service across all of its homes — systemic or organisational failure — rather than on resolving one tenant’s complaint or paying you compensation. For a personal problem, your routes are the association’s complaints process, the Housing Ombudsman and, where appropriate, a legal claim. You can still report serious concerns to the regulator, and widespread patterns are exactly what it wants to hear about, but it will not handle your individual case.

Asking your council’s Environmental Health team to inspect

Here is a genuine difference between renting from a housing association and renting from the council. Because your landlord is a housing association — a separate organisation from your local council — the council’s Environmental Health team can inspect your home and take enforcement action against the association if it finds serious hazards.

Why this route is open to you but not to council tenants

Councils assess hazards under the HHSRS and can require a landlord to put serious problems right. A council cannot readily take that enforcement action against its own housing stock, so council tenants generally cannot use this route against their landlord and rely instead on the complaints process and the Ombudsman. As a housing association tenant you are not in that position: the council and your landlord are different bodies, so asking Environmental Health to inspect is a real, free and sometimes very effective option.

What the council can do

• Inspect the property and score the hazards it finds.
• Serve a hazard awareness notice, or an improvement notice requiring specified works within a set period.
• Make a prohibition order restricting or preventing use of part or all of the home.
• Take emergency remedial action where there is an imminent risk of serious harm.

Using this alongside your complaint

You can ask Environmental Health to inspect while your complaint or your Ombudsman case is running — the routes are not mutually exclusive, and an officer’s findings can strengthen your written record. Contact the council’s housing or environmental health department and ask how to request an inspection of a housing association property.

Awaab’s Law and social landlords in England

Awaab’s Law places fixed timescales on social landlords in England for dealing with serious hazards, and housing associations are covered as registered providers of social housing. It works by implying terms into the social housing tenancy agreements it covers, so the obligations sit inside your tenancy rather than being enforced only by a regulator.

The timescales in outline

The requirements are being introduced in phases. The first phase, already in force, focuses on damp and mould and on emergency hazards — an emergency presenting a significant and imminent risk of harm must be made safe within 24 hours. A further phase, due from 30 November 2026, is set to extend the duties to a wider range of serious hazards, with deadlines to investigate, to give you a written summary of the findings and to begin any safety work. The exact number of days, and which hazards are in scope at any given time, are set by regulations still being rolled out, so check gov.uk for the current position.

Why your report date matters even more

Because the Awaab’s Law clocks start when the association becomes aware of a hazard, the date and content of your report carry real weight. Report in writing, keep the reference number, keep any written summary the association sends you, and note when any inspection actually happened. A missed deadline is not an automatic payout — a solicitor still has to assess the individual facts — but your paper trail is what shows a deadline was missed. Our full guide to Awaab’s Law for social housing tenants has the detail.

Common problems in housing association homes

The defects that most often lead housing association tenants to seek help are the same ones that affect any rented home, so we do not repeat the detail here — we point you to the pages that cover them. A few points matter for social tenants specifically.

Damp and mould

Damp and mould are among the most common and most serious complaints in social housing, and they sit at the centre of both Awaab’s Law and the regulator’s Safety and Quality Standard. Repeated repainting or wiping-down that ignores the underlying cause — a leak, failed ventilation or missing insulation — may mean the duty is still unmet, however many times a contractor attends. See damp and mould claims for what tends to count, what evidence helps, and how compensation is worked out (we never put a figure on it).

Leaks, heating and hot water

Roof leaks, failed guttering, penetrating damp and plumbing leaks are structural or installation problems the association is usually responsible for, and they often drive the damp that follows. A total or repeated loss of heating or hot water usually falls within the same core repairing duty and is treated as urgent, particularly in winter or where a child, an older person or someone unwell lives in the home. Photograph the source and the damage, and report each fresh occurrence rather than assuming an earlier report still stands.

If you owe rent arrears

Being behind on your rent does not remove the association’s repairing duties and does not automatically stop a disrepair claim. Rent and disrepair are separate issues, though they can interact — any compensation may, for example, be set against arrears rather than paid to you. Be upfront about arrears from the start so they can be handled properly. We explain this on our page about disrepair claims when you have rent arrears.

What happens after you contact RemedyBridge

RemedyBridge is not a law firm, does not conduct claims and does not give legal advice. What we do is help you work out whether your situation is worth taking further and, if it might be, connect you with someone who can advise on it.

The steps

• You complete a free online assessment describing the repairs, when you reported them and how the association responded.
• A person reviews your enquiry rather than an automated score deciding it, and we will say honestly if a free route looks like the better first step.
• Only with your permission do we introduce you to an independent solicitor.
• That solicitor decides for themselves whether they can help, and explains any funding arrangement to you directly before you commit to anything.

Using our assessment does not commit you to a claim, and if we think the Housing Ombudsman or your council is the better route we will tell you. Any advice about the merits of a claim, funding, costs or time limits comes from the solicitor, not from us.