Reporting repairs to your landlord: what counts as notice?

Report early, and report to the right place

A small leak becomes damaged plaster and mould; a slow drain becomes a blockage; an intermittent boiler fault becomes no heating at all. Reporting early does two things: it gives the landlord a chance to fix the problem, and it establishes when they first knew about it. That date can matter a great deal later.

Your tenancy agreement, the landlord’s website or a tenant portal will usually tell you how to report — an online form, a repairs line, an emergency number, an app, an email address or a letting agent. Use the normal system where you can; it is usually the fastest route and it makes disputes less likely.

If it is urgent, use the urgent route

Do not send an ordinary email and wait several days where there is an immediate safety issue — a major uncontrolled leak, dangerous electrics, total loss of heating in severe cold, structural danger, a fire-safety problem, sewage or a gas concern. Use the landlord’s emergency repair service, and the emergency services where the danger warrants it.

Describe what is happening, not what you think is causing it

You are not expected to be a surveyor. You do not need to know whether water is coming in through failed flashing, pointing, roof tiles, guttering or a pipe. Describe what you can observe.

“Water comes through the bedroom ceiling whenever it rains, the area around it is wet, and the plaster is starting to break away” is better than guessing “the lead flashing has failed”. Likewise “the boiler loses pressure every day and the radiators go cold” is useful even if you have no idea which component is at fault. The landlord has been given something to investigate, which is what matters.

Be specific about where

Not “there is mould everywhere” but “mould covers most of the external wall in the rear bedroom, around the window reveal and behind the wardrobe”. Not “the bathroom leaks” but “water appears under the bath after the shower is used and is now staining the kitchen ceiling below”. Specific descriptions get the right contractor sent, and they make it possible to compare one report with the next.

Photographs that show extent as well as detail

Take a wide photograph showing where the problem is and how far it goes, and a close one showing the defect. Update them as the condition changes. One undated close-up is much weaker than a series that shows something spreading. Our evidence guide covers this in more detail.

Turning a phone call into a record

A phone call is often the quickest way to get a repair logged, and the problem is purely evidential. Months later the tenant says “I called six times” and the landlord says “we have no record of those calls”.

So send a short message afterwards: “Further to my call today, I reported water entering through the bedroom ceiling when it rains. You gave me repair reference 48291. Please confirm the appointment when it is arranged.” That converts the call into a dated record without slowing anything down.

Keep the reference number, and use it

Quote it in later correspondence — “repair reference 48291 remains outstanding; the leak reported on 14 August has now damaged the plaster”. That keeps a history joined up instead of scattered across unrelated tickets.

Screenshot the portal

Portals lose things. Repairs disappear, statuses change, systems get replaced, and access ends when you move out. Screenshot the report, the date, the reference, the description and the status — and do it again when something is marked completed, cancelled, no access, awaiting parts or closed. If a repair was marked done and was not, that screenshot is the evidence.

Access, failed repairs and the same problem returning

More repairs stall over access than over the work. Keep a simple record of each appointment: the date, the contractor, whether they attended, what they looked at, what they said, what they did, and whether the problem came back. Reply in writing to every appointment offer even when the slot does not suit, and always propose alternatives — “the tenant would not let us in” is very hard to answer without that record.

When the repair is marked complete but is not

Say so, promptly, and do not assume the original report stays live indefinitely: “Repair 48291 shows as completed, but water is still coming through the same part of the ceiling when it rains. I am reporting that the repair has not resolved the problem.” Take fresh photographs.

When the same defect keeps coming back

Treat it as one chronology, not five incidents. Mould reported in January, cleaned and painted in February, back in March, treated again in April, back in June — that is one unresolved problem, and five reference numbers can make it look like five unrelated events. Say so explicitly when you chase: “this is the same bedroom damp first reported in January, and it has returned after both attendances”.

If your landlord says there is no record

Their system is evidence. It is not the final word on what happened.

Look for your own: sent emails, texts, call history, portal screenshots, reference numbers, photographs you sent, appointment texts, contractor messages, complaint correspondence, letters, and anyone who witnessed a visit. You can also ask them to search their historic repair logs, call recordings, contractor records, inspection notes and previous complaints.

If all you have is verbal reports, write down your best recollection now while it is fresh — the approximate date, the number you called, who you spoke to if you know, what you said and what you were told. Do not invent an exact date you do not remember; an honest approximation is worth more than a precise-looking guess that turns out to be wrong.

A repair report and a complaint are different things

A repair report says “this is broken or unsafe, please fix it”. A complaint says “you have failed to deal properly with the repair”. You may well need both, in that order — and submitting a repair does not start the complaints procedure, while making a complaint does not keep the underlying repair logged.

Our letter templates cover the three stages most problems go through: a first report, a chaser, and a formal complaint. If your landlord has stopped responding altogether, when a landlord ignores repair requests covers escalation.

What counts as notice

This is where reporting a repair becomes a legal question. For many housing-condition claims a court has to decide when the landlord had enough information about the defect for their obligation to act to arise. That is usually called notice, or knowledge.

Why it matters for Section 11

For defects inside the part of the property let to you, the ordinary rule is that the landlord needs information about the defect before liability for failing to repair arises. That applies to the repairing obligation in Section 11. Shelter Legal frames it as two separate requirements: the landlord must be put on notice that repair is required, and must then fail to carry it out within a reasonable period. Those are different questions, and the end of this guide explains why the difference matters.

O’Brien v Robinson: enough to put a reasonable person on inquiry

The leading case is O’Brien v Robinson [1973] AC 912, which concerned a ceiling that later collapsed. Lord Diplock described the rule in terms of the landlord having information about a defect sufficient to put a reasonable person on inquiry as to whether repair work was needed.

That is a practical test, and a forgiving one. You do not have to say “the ceiling joists are defective and require structural reinforcement”. You have to give enough for a reasonable landlord to realise something may need looking at. Shelter’s guidance puts it the same way: notice need not specify the full extent of the disrepair, nor tell the landlord what work to do.

Notice does not have to come from you, or in writing

A verbal report can count. So can a phone call, a text, an email, an online report, a conversation, a contractor’s report, or information from another responsible source. There is no required format.

But legal validity and evidential quality are different things. A phone call can be notice; a phone call followed by a dated email quoting the reference number is notice you can prove three years later.

The landlord can find out without being told

They may see it themselves, their contractor may identify it, a housing officer may record it, a surveyor may report it, or another employee may take a complaint. Shelter cites cases where knowledge reached the landlord through workmen, an environmental health officer and an independent valuer. So “there is no repair form from the tenant” does not establish “the landlord knew nothing”.

When the landlord inspected

This can be decisive. In Kerr v Maass [2019] EWHC 95 (Ch) the damp damage was generally evident, and the landlord’s visit — brief, and for another purpose — enabled him to appreciate the overall picture, even though the tenant had not drawn attention to each affected area. Record who attended, when, what they looked at, what was visible, what they said, and any report or photographs produced.

When a contractor knew

Where someone employed or authorised by the landlord to deal with repairs becomes aware of a defect, that can be relevant to the landlord’s knowledge. A contractor who attends a leaking pipe and records that the floor beneath has rotted makes it hard for the landlord to treat the rotten floor as news. How much it helps depends on who they were, their role, what they saw and what they passed on — but knowledge does not only travel from tenant to landlord.

“Constructive knowledge”, carefully

The phrase gets used loosely. The safer formulation is the one from O’Brien itself: did the landlord have information about the defect sufficient to put a reasonable landlord on inquiry? That is not a licence to argue “they should somehow have known”. There still has to be evidence of what information was actually available to them.

Fitness, common parts, and where the rule changes

Fitness for human habitation — treat notice as required

Shelter’s current guidance says a landlord is not normally liable to carry out works until put on notice, and applies that to the fitness duty as well as to repair. But the position under the modern section 9A regime has not been settled by binding appellate authority: Harvey v Heaver [2026] EWHC 1671 (KB) was deliberately confined to the property’s current fitness and the relief required, and left historic liability and notice outside that expedited determination.

The day-one limb is different

Section 9A requires the property to be fit when the qualifying tenancy begins, as well as during it. Shelter distinguishes the obligation about the condition of premises on the day they are let from the ordinary notice rule that applies to problems arising later. That is another reason the fitness duty is not Section 11 under another name.

Common parts the landlord controls may need no notice

Where the landlord owns or controls the common parts — a council or housing association owning the whole block — the repairing obligation for those areas may arise without you having notified them first. Shelter states that a tenant is not required to give notice of disrepair in common parts within the landlord’s legal interest and control.

That is not a reason to stay quiet. If you know the communal roof is leaking, the stairs are dangerous or a shared pipe is flooding, report it — not reporting a known problem invites an argument about whether you reasonably limited your own loss.

When your landlord only owns your flat

The analysis changes. In Edwards v Kumarasamy [2016] UKSC 40 the immediate landlord held a long lease of one flat while a separate freeholder controlled the paved area where the tenant was injured. The Supreme Court held he could only be liable if he had had notice of the disrepair before the accident, and he had not. Where the landlord does possess and control the common parts, the ordinary tenant-notice rule does not operate in the same way. Ownership and control decide which rule applies.

Awaab’s Law

For qualifying social housing in England, the landlord’s duties begin when it becomes aware of a potential qualifying hazard. No particular wording is needed and you do not have to say you are invoking it — but the advice is the same: tell them clearly, and record when they became aware. It runs on its own statutory timescales, not on the common-law reasonable-time test. See Awaab’s Law.

Proving when the landlord had notice

Contemporaneous evidence carries the weight: a sent email with its timestamp, a text, a portal submission, a reference number, an acknowledgement, an appointment confirmation, an inspection or contractor report, a complaint response, a photograph attached to a dated message, or a repair log obtained later.

A chronology draws them together — 4 January, leak reported, email plus reference 48291; 9 January, contractor attended, appointment text; 17 January, leak returned, photograph and email; 22 January, chased, portal screenshot; 2 February, plaster deteriorating, photographs; 5 February, formal complaint, acknowledgement. That is far more persuasive than reconstructing events from memory years later. Our chronology builder will lay one out for you.

If you cannot prove the first report

Do not assume that settles it. Did a contractor attend? Was a job raised? Did the landlord take photographs, or send a surveyor? Did you get an appointment text? Was the defect mentioned in a complaint, or seen by a housing officer? A contractor attending on 12 March makes it difficult to maintain that nothing was known until July. The question is knowledge, not whether one particular email survived.

Repeated reports do not reset the clock

If a leak was first reported in January, the landlord attended in February and it continued, reporting it again in March, April and June does not mean notice began in June. The earlier history establishes knowledge; the later reports show it continuing, the repairs failing, the condition worsening and how long it all went on.

When the landlord thought it was fixed

If a competent contractor told them the problem was resolved, they may reasonably have believed there was no continuing defect. So tell them promptly when it returns, and do not assume they know a repair failed if nobody has said so: “the leak returned last night in exactly the same place; repair 48291 has not resolved it”.

Notice is not the same as reasonable time

This is the distinction to take away, and it is the one most often collapsed. Notice asks when the landlord knew enough to be expected to investigate or repair. Reasonable time asks how long they were then allowed to deal with it.

Tell your landlord on Monday morning that the boiler has stopped and they have notice on Monday. That does not put them in breach at 9:01am, because they must normally be allowed a reasonable opportunity to investigate and put it right. How long is reasonable depends on urgency, risk, complexity, parts, whether temporary measures are possible, the effect on the household and what they already knew.