If you have a repair or hazard in your home and it is the landlord’s responsibility, you should report this to them as soon as possible. Wigan Council can also take enforcement action against landlords who don’t carry out essential repairs to make sure the repair or hazard is fixed and that you and your household are safe.
Who is responsible?
Both tenants and landlords have responsibilities for the upkeep of private rented homes. Your tenancy agreement should outline who is responsible for what. However, the main responsibilities for ensuring your home is safe and fit to live in are your landlord’s responsibilities by law. These important landlord responsibilities cannot be passed onto the tenant, even if this was put into the tenancy agreement (conditions in a tenancy agreement which make the tenant responsible for repairs which the landlord has to do by law have no legal effect).
Landlords are responsible for ensuring that homes are safe, secure, and in a good state of repair. This means the property must be fit to live in and have all essential utilities working properly. These responsibilities include:
- The property’s structure and exterior (e.g. walls, roof, windows, doors)
- Water and sanitation (e.g. sinks, baths, toilets, pipes and drains)
- Heating and hot water
- Gas appliances, pipes, flues and ventilation
- Electrical wiring and installations
- Ensuring homes are free from hazards, and have functioning smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.
Tenants are generally responsible for keeping their home clean and tidy, and in a good condition. Tenants are usually expected to carry out minor DIY tasks such as changing a lightbulb or unblocking a sink, and tenants should ensure that they suitably ventilate their home to guard against condensation and mould. Often garden maintenance will be the tenant’s responsibility too, and tenants are responsible for paying for any damage they or a guest cause to the property.
Reporting a repair or hazard to your landlord or letting agent
Tenants should report repairs to their landlord or letting agent as soon as they notice a problem. If you do not report a problem and it gets worse, you might be held responsible for extra damage.
Report repairs in writing so that you have a record. This can be by email, text message, or a posted letter, whichever way you usually communicate with your landlord. If you report repairs over the phone, send a follow-up email or text confirming what you spoke about and what repairs you reported. If you send a letter, consider using Royal Mail’s signed for service (external link) so that you have an independent record of your letter being delivered.
When reporting repairs, make sure to include:
- Your name and contact details
- Your address where the repair is needed
- Details about the repair
- Any photos or videos you have taken of the repair
- A reasonable time frame you would like the repair to be completed by.
Your landlord or letting agent are required by law to resolve repairs in a reasonable time. What is reasonable will depend on the severity of the repair, and the risk it poses to you and your household. For non-emergency repairs, 14 days should usually be considered reasonable. For larger jobs, it is common and reasonable for your landlord to install a temporary fix to make the issue safe, and then arrange to come back at a later date to finish the job, for example if they need to order specific parts.
You can use Shelter’s free email/letter templates (external link) to help you write to your landlord or letting agent to request repairs.
Keep a record of contact you have with your landlord or letting agent about the problem, including:
- Dates of any calls and what was said
- Dates of any visits to your home by your landlord or letting agent, or a contractor they’ve sent
- Copies of emails or letters you have sent or received.
If the repairs are not done after you have reported them, send a reminder to your landlord or letting agent to again request that they fix the repairs. Put your reminder in writing and:
- Inform them that the repair is still not fixed
- Remind them of their responsibilities to fix the repair
- Provide them with a timescale to respond to you
- Suggest any dates or times when you will be available for the repair to be booked in.
You can use Shelter’s free email/letter templates (external link) to help you write a reminder for your landlord or agent to complete a repair.
If the landlord or agent still does not respond to you or attend to the repair, or refuses to do the repair, Wigan Council’s Housing Standards team may be able to take further action to help you.
Report the repair to Wigan Council
If your landlord will not carry out the repair, our Housing Standards team might be able to intervene and help.
Before you report the issue to Housing Standards, you must have followed the above steps to report the repair to your landlord or letting agent first, and sent them a reminder.
We will take steps to make sure landlords and agents carry out essential or necessary repairs. We prioritise cases of major repairs and repairs which pose a risk to health and safety, or the integrity of the property. If your repair complaint is about cosmetic issues or minor repairs which do not affect your safety or health, it is unlikely that we will get involved.
To report a repair or hazard which your landlord or letting agent will not fix to Wigan Council, please use our online reporting form (see link at the bottom of this page). Include as much information as you can, and any pictures or videos if you have them, including copies of the requests you have made to your landlord or letting agent asking them to fix the problem.
How we deal with your issue if you report it to us
When we receive your report, a member of our Housing Standards team will assess your report and triage your repair or hazard issue.
We will consider all reports we receive fairly and based on the information provided.
Our triage will assess how serious the repair or hazard is, and this will inform how we deal with your complaint and the priority we give to helping you with it.
After receiving your report, we may need to contact you to ask for further information, including pictures or videos of the issue you are reporting.
How we deal with your case will depend on the individual circumstances; however, the general steps we will take are:
- Contact your landlord or letting agent (by letter) to let them know that we’ve been made aware of the outstanding repairs, and to ask them to carry out the required repairs and to keep us updated with their progress
- Contact you to let you know we’ve contacted your landlord or letting agent about the repairs you reported, and to ask you to keep us updated
- If your landlord does not respond to us or does not carry out the repairs, we may arrange a time with you to visit your property and carry out an inspection
- After we inspect the property, we will inform your landlord of any repairs or hazards we have identified which need rectifying, and give them a reasonable timescale to address the issues
- If the repairs or hazards we find at your home are significant or detrimental to health or safety, we may take formal enforcement action against your landlord.
What enforcement action we take will greatly depend on the specifics of each case. Enforcement could include serving legal orders on your landlord, compelling your landlord to undertake repairs, imposing a fine on your landlord, prosecution, or some other measures. In some cases, we may organise remedial works to the property ourselves to ensure your home is safe.
All cases will be dealt with in line with our Housing Standards policy.
Important advice for tenants
- Do not stop paying rent, even if repairs aren’t done - it might seem unfair, but tenants do not have the right to withhold rent because a landlord won’t carry out necessary repairs. If you stop paying rent, you could be evicted and lose your home. If you do still decide to stop paying rent, keep it aside and don’t spend it, so you can pay it to your landlord when the repair is done to clear any arrears you have built up.
- Do not arrange the repairs yourself and deduct the cost from your rent payments unless you are certain you are following the correct procedure - if a landlord won’t carry out necessary repairs, tenants do have a right to arrange the repair themselves and deduct the cost from future rent repayments. However, there is a specific legal process that tenants must follow to do this, otherwise they are at risk of being evicted. If you want to arrange the repairs yourself, you should seek professional advice to make sure you follow the correct legal steps.
- If you’re unsure what to do or need help, seek early advice - charities such as Shelter and Citizens Advice can provide you with advice about your situation.
Our online reporting form