If the heating keeps failing, damp is spreading up the bedroom wall, or the building feels unsafe to live in, that is more than an inconvenience. It is likely a breach of housing law your landlord can be made to pay for, whether or not you have ever heard of the Decent Homes Standard.
For years the Decent Homes Standard applied only to social housing. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 extends it to private renters for the first time, but not yet. The government's response in January 2026 confirmed the standard will apply to the private rented sector from 2035. Until then, your protection comes from laws that are already in force, and they are stronger than most renters realise.
This article explains what the Decent Homes Standard will require, what already protects you today, and how to claim compensation if your landlord is leaving your home in a poor state.
What will the Decent Homes Standard require?
The Decent Homes Standard sets four minimum conditions a rented home must meet. The property must be free of category one hazards under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. It must be in a reasonable state of repair. It must have reasonably modern facilities. And it must provide a reasonable degree of thermal comfort.
Put plainly: no serious damp, no broken heating, no dangerous electrics, no structural problems that make the home unsafe to live in.
For social housing, the standard has been in place since 2001, and even there the bar is not cleared automatically. Hundreds of thousands of social homes still fell below it in recent years.
For private renters, the standard is genuinely new, and it does not bite yet. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 provides for it, and the government has confirmed it will apply to the private rented sector from 2035. That is a real change worth knowing about, but it is not what you rely on if your home is in a poor state in 2026.
What you rely on today is the fitness and repair law that already covers private tenancies. Under it, your landlord cannot wait for a problem to become serious before acting. If damp is developing, the duty to deal with it applies well before the ceiling comes down.
The most common disrepair problems in private rentals
Most of the conditions the Decent Homes Standard will cover are already enforceable through three laws that apply now: the repairing obligations in Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, which requires your home to be fit to live in throughout the tenancy, and the Housing Health and Safety Rating System, which your council enforces against serious hazards. The most common problems fall into a handful of categories.
Damp and mould is the most widespread. If your landlord has repeatedly been told about damp and failed to address the cause, that is likely a category one hazard under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. Awaab's Law, which came into force under the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 and is being extended to the private sector, sets strict timelines for landlords to investigate and fix damp and mould. You can read more about Awaab's Law and what private renters can claim.
Heating failures are the second major category. A property without a functioning boiler in winter does not meet the thermal comfort requirement. The same applies to inadequate insulation that makes a home impossible to heat within normal bills.
Structural disrepair covers broken windows, failing roofs, faulty electrics, and crumbling plaster that affects the safety of the building. These tend to attract the highest hazard ratings under the HHSRS scoring system.
Facilities condition covers kitchens and bathrooms that are so outdated or broken they cannot be used effectively. A kitchen fitted in 1985 with a broken oven and no extractor is not automatically a breach. A kitchen where the units are rotting and the plumbing is leaking is a different matter.
Document every problem with dated photographs and written reports to your landlord. Verbal requests are almost impossible to rely on later.
How much compensation can tenants claim for Decent Homes breaches?
Compensation comes through several legal routes, and the amounts are not trivial.
The headline figure is a civil disrepair claim. Under Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, you can claim damages for the period you lived with the breach. Compensation typically covers a percentage reduction in the rental value for the affected period, plus any personal property damaged by the disrepair, for example clothing or furniture damaged by mould. If the disrepair caused a personal injury, separate damages apply.
For properties in breach of licensing requirements, a Rent Repayment Order lets you claim back up to 2 years' rent for offences committed on or after 1 May 2026, up from the old 12-month cap. HMO licensing failures are a common trigger. If your landlord rents out an unlicensed property that is also in serious disrepair, you can pursue both routes at once. See our guide on how to apply for a Rent Repayment Order in the UK for the process.
Councils enforce the standard of your home now through the Housing Health and Safety Rating System, not through the Decent Homes Standard, which does not reach private renters until 2035. Where the council finds a category one hazard, it can serve an improvement notice, and a landlord who ignores it faces a civil penalty of up to £30,000 or prosecution under the Housing Act 2004. Those penalties go to the council, not to you, but they strengthen your hand. A landlord facing a council penalty is far more motivated to settle your disrepair claim.
To get a rough figure for your specific situation, the Remedy Legal platform can run a landlord compliance assessment and estimate your claim value based on data from similar past cases.
How to complain to your landlord and council first
A disrepair claim almost always starts with a formal written complaint. Skip this step and a court will want to know why.
Write to your landlord setting out the specific problems, the dates you first reported them, and a deadline for a response. Fourteen days is standard for non-urgent issues. For heating failures in winter or serious damp, seven days is reasonable. The letter should reference Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 specifically.
If your landlord ignores you or disputes the breach, the next step is your local council's private sector housing team. Councils have the power to inspect the property, issue improvement notices, and prosecute landlords who fail to comply. An improvement notice from the council is valuable evidence for any later claim.
Parallel to this, you can instruct a surveyor to produce a disrepair report. A qualified surveyor's assessment of the hazard category and its effect on rental value is the strongest evidence you can bring to court.
If you are an assured tenant under the Renters' Rights Act 2025, your landlord cannot serve a retaliatory eviction notice after you complain about disrepair. That protection is now built into the legislation. The removal of Section 21 no-fault evictions, which ends on 1 May 2026, removes the most common tool landlords used to respond to legitimate complaints. Read more about what the end of Section 21 means for your tenancy.
Remedy Legal can draft a formal letter to your landlord citing the relevant legislation. The letter drafting feature generates correspondence with the correct legal references and a clear statement of the breach.
Which court or tribunal decides a disrepair claim?
Two different forums handle these cases, and it helps to know which one yours goes to.
A disrepair damages claim is a County Court matter, not a tribunal one. Because the tenant disputes the facts and asks for damages, it is brought under the Part 7 procedure on form N1, not Part 8. Housing disrepair has its own low small-claims threshold, so even a modest claim can end up on the fast or multi-track, where you can recover more of your costs. It is still designed to be usable without a solicitor.
A Rent Repayment Order is different. That goes to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) on the RRO1 form. Our step-by-step Rent Repayment Order tribunal guide walks through how to complete and submit it.
Whichever forum, your evidence bundle needs your tenancy agreement, the full correspondence history with your landlord, dated photographs, any surveyor's report, your council's inspection records if available, and a clear schedule of the breach period and the rent reduction you are claiming.
The average disrepair claim for serious damp affecting a whole room over 12 months could justify a 20 to 30 per cent rent reduction for that period. On a £1,200 monthly rent, that is £2,880 to £4,320.
When the Decent Homes Standard reaches private renters
The Decent Homes Standard itself does not apply to the private rented sector until 2035. When it does, it will give councils a further set of civil penalties: an immediate penalty of up to £7,000 for serious failures, such as a category one hazard the landlord has not taken reasonable steps to deal with, and a maximum fine of up to £40,000, raised from the current £30,000, for ignoring enforcement action. That is the change worth watching for, but it is a long way off.
None of that stops you acting on a bad home now. The fitness and repair duties in Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 are in force today, and the council's power to enforce category one hazards under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System is too. Your breach period, and the compensation that flows from it, runs from when the problem started and you told your landlord, not from any future commencement date. So document it immediately.
Awaab's Law, which already sets fixed repair timescales in social housing, is being extended to private renters in a later phase of the Renters' Rights Act. Once it applies, it will put hard deadlines on damp and mould in private lets too.
If your council is slow, your own claim through the courts does not depend on council action, and you can run both at once. For a fuller picture of what the Act changes, see our guide on what tenants can claim under the Renters' Rights Act 2025.
If your home has serious damp, a broken heating system, or structural disrepair your landlord has repeatedly ignored, start with a formal written complaint today. Photograph everything, report it to the council in parallel, and then assess your claim.
Remedy Legal can give you a free instant assessment of your situation. Share the details of your disrepair issue and Remedy will tell you which legal routes apply, what the claim might be worth, and what to do next. You can start on WhatsApp or through the platform directly, with no credit card needed.
