Housing conditions and disputes

If you have any problems with your home, you should contact your landlord or management agent in the first instance. If you have already asked but feel they have failed to carry out an essential repair or that it hasn’t been done to a satisfactory level, then we may be able to help.

Problems we can support you with:

• rotten or broken windows or doors that may be causing a risk to your health or safety
• bathrooms, kitchens and toilets that are inadequate or in severe disrepair
• disconnection of gas, water or electricity
• restoring heating or hot water
• making dangerous electrical or gas appliances safe
• addressing damp and mould and improving heating systems or ventilation 

Report a property in poor repair

If your home is unsafe or poor repair you can tell us about it using our online disrepair form.

What happens next

Once you report a possible disrepair to our housing team, they will do a Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) assessment, which includes gardens and paths within the boundary of the premises.

An inspector will visit your home and identify any hazards that could lead to harm whilst the property is in use.

If they think your home has serious health and safety hazards we will look to take action.

Please note, we do not have to inspect every property in our area but will inspect if we believe there is reason to do so.

Enforcement policy 

Wherever possible, we will try to work with your landlord to make the property safe.

If the landlord doesn’t agree to work with us, then we will look to take formal action.  This means we could:

• serve an improvement notice requiring remedial works (the most likely action)
• make a prohibition order, which closes the whole or part of a dwelling or restricts the number of permitted occupants
• serve a hazard awareness notice
• take emergency remedial action
• make an emergency prohibition or demolition order
• include the property in a clearance area

The statutory notice will set out the work needs to be done and will specify timescales in which it must be completed.

If the landlord fails to carry out legally required work, we may prosecute them via the local magistrates' court. If found guilty, the court will normally issue a fine and/or other instructions.

Hotel, hostel and other accommodation

We also monitor and inspect of all hostel, hotel and other accommodation that we use to temporarily house people on our housing waiting list, to make sure they meet the required standards.

This area of our service operates under the Setting the Standards (StS) regime, where we share information gathered with all other London councils.