One of the key elements to a successful Housing Disrepair claim is notification. The Landlord needs to be put on notice of the outstanding repairs.

Considering that your Landlord is aware of the existence of repairs, you have provided them a reasonable period of time to fix the defects, but yet the Landlord has not carried out the work, there should be bones for a Housing Disrepair claim.

You need proof that you have put your Landlord on notice of the outstanding repairs and yet they have still failed to rectify the same and that you have been caused inconvenience as a result.

As part of the claim, Landlords have a duty to provide relevant documents for inspection, usually contained within the housing file. For example, a contact or repairs history. However, it is not unusual for certain records to be missing or for a party to dispute that a specific complaint was made.

The only way you can ensure you have all evidence of complaints is to keep a good record of every time complaints have been made.

Some suggestions on how to do this are as follows:

• Make a ‘complaints diary’ – note down every time you contact your Landlord, what date/time, who you spoke to and what was said;
• Don’t delete email correspondence to and from your Landlord;
• Keep all letters sent to and received from your Landlord;
• Make complaints in person and note down when this took place and what was said;
• If you use an online chat to make a complaint, then screenshot the conversation as evidence;
• Make a note of any visits the Landlord has made to the Property and what work was carried out if any;
• Take photographs of the defects and send these to your Landlord.

If you are renting a property and your house is suffering with disrepair, you have made complaints of the same and yet your Landlord has not carried out the repairs, call our offices on 01254297130 to see if we can help.

Olivia Plumb – Housing Disrepair Paralegal