Tenant's Guide to Reporting Repairs: What You Should Know

Why Written Notice Is Essential

The law requires landlords to carry out repairs, but only after they have been notified of the problem. Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 imposes the repair obligation — but the landlord's liability to act begins from the date they have notice of the defect. If you report a problem verbally and your landlord does nothing, you have no evidence of when the notification was made or what was said. A verbal report is as good as no report from an enforcement perspective.

Written notice — specifically, an email — creates a timestamped, documented record that establishes:

• The exact date and time the landlord was notified
• The precise description of the defect as you reported it
• A clear starting point for any reasonable time calculation
• Evidence of whether the landlord acknowledged or ignored the report

For tenants in London, where disputes between tenants and landlords are relatively common and where the rental market's power imbalance can make tenants reluctant to push back, having a clear written record is genuinely protective. It costs nothing and takes two minutes.

What to Include in a Repair Report

A well-drafted repair notification email should include:

• Date: Today's date, stated clearly at the start of the email.
• Property address: Confirm which property and which unit you are reporting from.
• Description of the problem: Be specific. Not "the boiler is broken" but "the boiler has been producing no heat or hot water since yesterday evening, 7 June 2025. The display is showing error code F.28." Not "there is a leak" but "there is a leak from the kitchen cold tap, which is dripping continuously. The drip rate appears to be approximately one drop per second."
• Urgency level: State whether the problem is affecting habitability, health, or safety. "This is affecting our ability to wash and heat the flat" or "this is not an immediate emergency but needs attention to prevent worsening damage."
• Photographs: Where practical, attach photos. A photograph of a damp patch, a broken fitting, or visible damage strengthens the report and prevents disputes later about the extent of the problem when it was first reported.
• Request for a response: Ask for acknowledgement and a timeline for repair. This creates an additional record of whether the landlord responded.

Send the email to the landlord's email address. If you use a letting agent, send to both the agent and the landlord's direct address if you have it. Keep the sent email — do not delete it.

Landlord's Legal Response Timeframes

The law requires repairs within a "reasonable time" after notification. Case law and regulatory guidance have established the following framework:

• Emergency (within 24 hours): Total loss of heating in cold weather, gas leak, burst pipe causing flooding, sewage backflow, loss of electricity. The landlord must act immediately on emergency notifications — not the next business day.
• Urgent (within 28 days): Partial heating failure, intermittent hot water, broken window, single blocked toilet where no other toilet is available, significant damp or water ingress. Twenty-eight days is the upper bound for urgent repairs — a responsible landlord will aim to address these faster.
• Non-urgent (reasonable timeframe): Dripping taps, minor damp, cosmetic damage, worn fittings that do not affect function. A longer scheduling period is acceptable, but the repair cannot be deferred indefinitely.

Note that "28 days" is not a universal statutory deadline across all repair types — it is a practical benchmark that reflects accumulated case law and regulatory guidance. For genuine emergencies, 28 days is wholly inadequate; the obligation is immediate.

What to Do If Your Landlord Ignores Repairs

If you have sent a written repair notification and received no response or inadequate action, escalation follows a logical sequence:

Follow-Up Notice

Send a follow-up email after the applicable timeframe has passed. Reference the original notification date and state that the repair has not been addressed. Keep this factual and not adversarial — you are creating a further record, not starting an argument.

Council Housing Team / Environmental Health

Every London borough has an Environmental Health team (sometimes called the Housing Enforcement or Private Sector Housing team) that enforces housing standards in private rented properties. If a defect represents a health or safety hazard — no heating, serious damp, structural damage, fire risk — you can report it to the council. Environmental Health inspectors can attend the property, assess the defect against the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), and serve Improvement Notices or Prohibition Orders on the landlord requiring remediation. Council enforcement is often effective — landlords who ignore tenants do not always ignore local authority enforcement notices.

Rent Repayment Orders

Under the Housing and Planning Act 2016, the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) can make a Rent Repayment Order (RRO) requiring a landlord to repay up to 12 months of rent to a tenant if the landlord has committed certain offences — including failing to comply with an Improvement Notice served by the council. This is a significant financial consequence for non-compliant landlords and is used increasingly by London tenants in serious disrepair cases.

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018

The Homes Act 2018 amended the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 to require that all rented homes are fit for human habitation at the start of the tenancy and throughout. Landlords must keep the property free from hazards that make it unfit to live in — including serious disrepair that affects health or safety. The Act enables tenants to sue landlords directly in the County Court for breach of the fitness obligation, without needing to wait for council enforcement. Remedies include damages and an injunction requiring the repairs to be carried out.

Emergency Repairs When the Landlord Is Unreachable

Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, as developed in case law, allows a tenant to arrange and pay for an emergency repair and deduct the cost from rent if the landlord has been notified and has failed or is unable to act in an emergency situation. This is called the right to repair and deduct — but it is not a right to be exercised casually.

To exercise this right validly:

• Notify the landlord in writing of the emergency and that you intend to arrange the repair yourself if they do not respond within a specified short period (the period must be proportionate to the urgency — for a burst pipe, a few hours; for an emergency boiler failure in winter, 24 hours)
• Obtain quotes and instruct a qualified contractor at a reasonable market rate — not an inflated or unreasonable cost
• Retain all invoices and documentation of the repair
• Notify the landlord in writing that the repair has been carried out and the cost, and deduct the exact invoice amount from the next rent payment with a covering letter

This process should be a last resort. Incorrectly executed, it can create legal risk for the tenant. If in doubt about whether this right applies in your specific situation, contact Shelter (0808 800 4444) or your local Citizens Advice before acting.

Common Mistakes Tenants Make

• Verbal-only reports: A conversation that is not followed up in writing has no evidential value.
• Accepting verbal promises: "I'll get someone round next week" is not a commitment — it is a statement of intention that may never materialise. Always follow up a verbal promise with a brief email: "Following our conversation today, I understand you will be arranging a plumber to fix the boiler by [date]. Please confirm."
• Not documenting damage with photos: Take photos when you first notice a problem and again at each subsequent stage if it worsens. Date-stamped photographs (most phone cameras automatically embed the date and time in the image metadata) are compelling evidence in any dispute.
• Delaying reporting to avoid conflict: The landlord's obligation to repair does not start until you notify them. A damp patch that you watched spread for six months without reporting is much harder to use as the basis for a disrepair claim than one you reported the week you noticed it.
• Paying for repairs and not claiming back: Unless the repair is one that is explicitly your responsibility under the tenancy agreement, you should not be paying for landlord's repairs. Seek advice before spending your own money on the landlord's obligations.