Disrepair claims
A disrepair claim is a legal claim against your landlord about an issue relating to maintenance to your home.
- Make sure to check who's responsible for the repairs
- Make sure you’ve reported the problem (at least once) and given us a reasonable amount of time to do the work
- Finally, if you do have a repair issue with us, we urge you to go through our feedback channels to try and resolve it. Before we engage with any claim for disrepair, we ask that our complaints process has been followed and exhausted. We always aim to sort out complaints quickly, so if you’re unhappy with a part of our repairs service, please visit our feedback page
- You may also wish to seek independent advice from a trusted source, such as your local Citizen’s Advice Buerau
We’re seeing a rise in the number of customers being contacted by companies offering a ‘no win no fee’ service for a housing disrepair. These companies often exploit the system and aren't connected to us in anyway. They're rarely there to benefit you and if the case is won, often the money they take as fees can be very high.
We’ve heard that some of these companies can put a lot of pressure on people to sign up and if they change their mind later are threatened with legal action. If you're feeling this at all please get in touch with us or if you would prefer, trading standards at your local authority.
If you do decide to make a claim with a disrepair company, it’s worth noting that:
- There may be hidden costs and you may be charged a fee if you change your mind
- It'll be a lengthy process
- Defending disrepair cases is extremely costly for us and money spent on these claims takes away from funding in other areas
- We'll always defend any claim rigorously where we feel it is unjustified
- They may advise you don’t allow us access to complete repairs leading you to believe you’ll get more money. This isn’t true as the court will see our access attempts. So refusing access mean you’ll end up living with the outstanding repairs for longer
