Crumbling plaster, damaged ceilings and structural defects

Is plaster the landlord’s responsibility, or is it “just decoration”?

This is the single most common sticking point on plaster, and it is worth understanding properly, because tenants are frequently given an answer that sounds authoritative and is not right.

For most tenancies in England granted for less than seven years, section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 requires the landlord to keep in repair the structure and exterior of the home. The argument landlords have historically run is that internal plaster is a finish rather than part of the structure — in other words, decoration, which is usually the tenant’s side of the line.

What the Court of Appeal decided

In Grand v Gill [2011] EWCA Civ 554, decided on 19 May 2011, the Court of Appeal held that plaster forming part of or applied to walls and ceilings is part of the structure of the premises. The court considered the earlier authority relied on for the opposite view, Irvine v Moran, and held that it was wrong on this point. The type of plaster does not matter — traditional lath and plaster and a modern skim finish are treated the same way.

The practical effect is that if plaster in your home has deteriorated — blown, crumbling, falling away, or damaged by something behind it — that generally falls within the landlord’s repairing duty, and applies to private landlords, councils and housing associations alike.

What this does not mean

It does not mean every mark on a wall is disrepair. Scuffs, chips, nail holes and tired paintwork are decoration, and decoration inside the home is usually the tenant’s responsibility under the tenancy agreement. It also does not automatically settle who redecorates after a repair: when a landlord hacks off and replasters a wall, the making good afterwards is a separate question that often has to be raised explicitly rather than assumed.

Disrepair, decoration or damage — telling them apart

Repairing duties bite on disrepair, which broadly means something has deteriorated from the condition it was in. That distinction explains several answers tenants find confusing.

• Disrepair — plaster that has blown, cracked away from the wall, crumbled, become soft and damp, or fallen. Ceilings that have cracked, sagged or come down. This is the landlord’s side of the line.
• Decoration — paint, wallpaper and the finish over sound plaster. Normally yours, unless the tenancy says otherwise or decoration has been damaged by a repair or by disrepair the landlord failed to fix.
• Tenant damage — a hole from moving furniture, or damage caused by someone in the household or a visitor. That is usually yours to put right, and it is better to say so early than to have it discovered later.
• A design or construction shortcoming rather than deterioration — for example a wall that has always been cold and prone to condensation. This is more complicated, because a repairing duty is about restoring something, not improving it. The fitness-for-habitation duty can be relevant where the home is not reasonably fit to live in.

The honest position is that these categories overlap in real homes and are argued about. If a landlord has labelled something as decoration or as your damage and you disagree, that disagreement is itself worth recording in writing.

“That is fair wear and tear”

This is a common answer and it is usually the wrong way round. “Fair wear and tear excepted” is a phrase that normally qualifies a **tenant’s** obligations — it protects you from being charged for ordinary ageing. It is not generally a defence to the landlord’s repairing duty.

Plaster that has deteriorated through normal use and the passage of time is still plaster that has deteriorated. That is what a repairing obligation is for. A landlord is not excused from replacing a worn-out roof because roofs wear out, and the same logic applies to plaster. If you are told your crumbling plaster is fair wear and tear, it is reasonable to ask which part of the tenancy agreement they say puts it on you.

“It was already like that when I moved in”

Tenants talk themselves out of complaining on this more than any other point, and it is usually a mistake. A defect being present when you moved in does **not** automatically make it your responsibility, and it does not prevent you from raising it with your landlord.

Where the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) provisions apply, the landlord’s duty includes ensuring the property is fit for human habitation **at the start of the tenancy and throughout it** — so a problem that was already there when you got the keys is squarely within it rather than outside it.

Separate repairing duties may also apply, and whether they are engaged depends on which duty applies to your tenancy, what has actually caused the plaster to fail, and when the landlord became aware of it. Those are questions about your particular tenancy rather than ones a page can settle.

One practical point either way: if the plaster was already cracked, loose or crumbling when you moved in, keep any check-in report, inventory, or photographs and messages showing its condition at the start of the tenancy. That record is the thing that establishes the damage predates you.

Why plaster fails, and why the cause decides who fixes it

Plaster very rarely fails for no reason. Identifying what is behind it matters, because the underlying defect is usually the thing that has to be repaired — and it is usually squarely the landlord’s.

• Damp reaching the wall — penetrating damp through a fault outside, or rising damp where a damp-proof course has failed or been bridged. Plaster holds the moisture, salts come through, and the surface blows. See damp and mould claims for how the different types are told apart.
• A leak — a slow escape from plumbing, a failed shower tray, a roof or gutter defect, or water from the flat above. This often shows as a defined patch, sometimes with staining, and is covered on our page about leaks and water ingress.
• Movement in the building — settlement, subsidence or heave, which tends to crack plaster along a line rather than degrade it across an area.
• Age and failure of the key — old lath and plaster loses its grip on the laths above, and modern plaster can lose its bond to the background. This shows as a hollow sound when tapped and a bulge that gives slightly under pressure.
• Persistent condensation on cold surfaces, which keeps plaster damp long enough to soften and to grow mould on the surface.
• Poor previous work — a patch repair done over damp plaster, or the wrong plaster used on a wall that needed a moisture-resistant system.

Ceilings: when this stops being cosmetic

Ceilings deserve their own treatment because the failure mode is different. A wall that loses its plaster is a nuisance; a ceiling that loses its plaster can injure someone, and older lath and plaster ceilings can come down in a large section rather than a small patch.

Signs that should be treated as urgent

• The ceiling is sagging, bulging or has dropped away from the edges of the room.
• A crack has appeared in a line, or plaster is visibly detaching around a crack.
• Debris, dust or fragments are coming down, or there is a hollow sound over a wide area.
• The floor above feels bouncy or unusually springy underfoot.
• There is water staining that is spreading, or an active drip, especially around a light fitting.

Where any of these apply, stop using the room if it is safe to do so, keep children and pets out of it, move what you can, and report it as an emergency rather than through the ordinary repairs route. If a light fitting is involved, do not use that circuit until it has been checked — see electrical and safety hazards.

Textured coatings and asbestos

Textured decorative coatings — often known by the brand name Artex — were widely used on ceilings and some walls, and those applied before 2000 may contain asbestos. Left undisturbed and in good condition they are not generally considered a risk. The risk comes from disturbing them.

Do not sand, scrape, drill, cut or attempt to remove a textured coating yourself, and do not sweep up debris dry if a textured ceiling has been damaged. Report it, say clearly that you believe the coating may contain asbestos, and ask the landlord to arrange testing before any work is carried out. Social landlords normally hold an asbestos register for their stock and can check it.

Cracks and structural movement

Most cracks in most homes are not a structural problem. Plaster shrinks as it dries, materials expand and contract with temperature and humidity, and new buildings settle. It is worth being realistic about this, because reporting every hairline crack as subsidence tends to make it harder to be taken seriously about the one that matters.

Usually not structural

• Fine hairline cracks in plaster, especially in a newer property or after a room has been heated for the first time in a while.
• Cracks that follow the joint between two materials — where a plasterboard ceiling meets a wall, or around a doorframe.
• Cracking that has been there unchanged for years and is not widening.

Worth proper investigation

• Diagonal or stepped cracking that follows the mortar joints in brickwork, inside or outside.
• Cracks that are noticeably wider at one end, or wider than a few millimetres.
• Cracking that is measurably getting worse over weeks or months.
• Doors or windows that have started to stick or no longer close, where they used to be fine.
• A crack that appeared suddenly, or that runs through both the inside and the outside of the same wall.
• Floors that have begun to slope, or skirtings that have pulled away.

Terms get used loosely here. Settlement is the normal downward movement of a new building as it beds in. Subsidence is the ground beneath the foundations moving down, often linked to drainage faults, tree roots or particular soil conditions. Heave is the ground moving upward. Only a suitably qualified surveyor or engineer can tell you which, if any, applies to your home — this page cannot, and neither can a landlord’s repairs operative on a routine visit.

Reporting it, and what to ask for

A repairing duty is generally only triggered once the landlord knows there is a problem, so what you reported and when is often the most important part of the history. Our guide on reporting repairs to your landlord covers how to put a report in writing so it counts.

• Report in writing — email or the online portal — even if you have already phoned. If you have only ever phoned, send a short written summary now with the dates you called.
• Describe the location precisely: which room, which wall or which part of the ceiling.
• Describe what you can see rather than diagnosing it: “plaster is bulging and hollow-sounding over about half a metre” is more useful than “the wall is damp”.
• Say what has changed and over what period, and whether anyone in the household is more vulnerable to the conditions.
• Ask specifically for an inspection that identifies the cause, and ask for the outcome in writing.
• If you believe a ceiling coating may contain asbestos, say so in the report.
• Keep the reference number and every reply.

If reports go unanswered, use the landlord’s formal complaints procedure — it is free, it creates a dated record, and for social landlords it is the gateway to the Housing Ombudsman. Our page on free help options sets out those routes, and if the problem is being ignored altogether see what to do when repair requests are ignored.

Evidence that actually helps

Plaster and structural problems are unusually well suited to evidence, because they change visibly over time. Our evidence guide covers the general principles; these are the points specific to this kind of damage.

• Photograph wide and close. A wide shot shows which wall in which room; a close shot shows the texture and depth of the damage.
• Put something in shot for scale — a coin, a ruler or a tape measure held against a crack tells a reader far more than the crack alone.
• Date everything, and repeat the same shot from the same position every few weeks. A sequence showing a crack widening is significantly stronger than one photograph.
• Use video for anything that needs movement or sound: a hollow-sounding ceiling being tapped gently, a bouncing floor, debris on the floor beneath.
• Photograph the surrounding context too — the gutter above the damp patch, the bathroom on the other side of the wall.
• Keep any surveyor’s report, council Environmental Health report, contractor’s notes or works order you are given.
• Keep a note of rooms you have stopped using, and anything of yours that has been damaged.

England and Wales

The core position is similar on both sides of the border, but the legislation and the escalation routes differ.

In England, section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 covers the structure and exterior for most tenancies of under seven years, and the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 requires the home to be fit to live in. Serious hazards can also be assessed by the council’s Environmental Health team. See housing disrepair claims in England.

In Wales, most occupiers hold an occupation contract under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 rather than a tenancy, and the landlord’s repairing and fitness obligations sit within that framework. The terminology differs — contract-holder rather than tenant — but the substance of the repairing duty on structure is comparable. See housing disrepair claims in Wales.

What a claim can and cannot do

Where a landlord has been told about disrepair and has not put it right within a reasonable time, a claim normally seeks two things: an order that the outstanding work is done, and compensation for the period the home was not as it should have been. How compensation is approached is explained on our page about housing disrepair compensation — no page can tell you what a particular case is worth, and you should be wary of any that offers to.

A claim will not rehouse you, will not force an improvement that goes beyond repair, and is not the route for disputes that have nothing to do with the condition of the property. Free routes — the complaints procedure, the Housing Ombudsman for social tenants, and your council’s Environmental Health team — often resolve repairs without a claim at all, and are worth using first.