Landlords' advice

Safety standards

If you're not sure about your responsibilities for safety as a landlord, we can give you advice on what standards you need to meet.

As a landlord, you must follow:

Working with your tenants

At the start of a tenancy, you should clearly explain what you and your tenants are responsible for.

A landlord who rents out a property is legally responsible for:

If your property needs major repairs, you will need to arrange this. You can't expect your tenants to pay for these.

Tenants' responsibilities

Your tenants may be responsible for small repairs such as:

  • cosmetic decorating
  • gardening
  • changing plugs and light bulbs
  • unblocking sinks, toilets and drains

If your tenants aren't confident with DIY, you could recommend or put them in touch with contractors or local handyman schemes.

Condensation, mould and damp

You have shared responsibilities with your tenants for reducing condensation and mould in your properties. Find out more here:

Having your property formally inspected

If you own a property and rent it out we may decide to do a HHSRS inspection because

  • your tenants have asked for an inspection
  • an area survey has been carried out and we think your property may be hazardous

We hope to resolve issues informally but if repairs are not carried out we can serve an enforcement notice for which there will be a charge covering officer time and administration cost. This will be reduced to 40% of the calculated fee if paid within 30 days of invoice. We can also do the works ourselves and claim the costs back from you.

Private property repairs guidance

This leaflet details the process we follow when investigating complaints:

Housing Standards Enforcement Policy

Whether or not you need to carry out repairs depends on the seriousness of the problem and the requirements of the Housing Standards Enforcement Policy:

Further information

You can speak to our Environmental Health Technical Support team about any of these concerns by:

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