The heating is dead, the water runs cold, and your landlord's last message said someone would "look at it soon". Meanwhile you're boiling the kettle to wash up and sleeping in a jumper. If you rent in England, the law does not expect you to wait patiently. A home without heating or hot water is an emergency repair, and the timescale your landlord must work to is measured in days, not weeks.
If the fault is a broken boiler specifically, our guide on what to do when your landlord won't fix the boiler covers the appliance angle. This post covers the wider right, whatever the cause, and what each cold day is worth.
Heating and hot water are your landlord's legal responsibility
Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 implies into almost every private tenancy a duty "to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for space heating and heating water".
Put simply, whatever heats your home and your water, whether that is a gas boiler, electric storage heaters, an immersion tank or a communal system, your landlord must keep it working. The duty applies to any tenancy of under 7 years, which covers nearly every private rented home in England, and the Act makes any clause contracting out of section 11 void.
The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 adds that your home must be fit to live in throughout the tenancy, and a home you cannot keep warm or wash in can fail that test.
How long can a landlord leave you without heating or hot water?
The legal standard is a "reasonable time" from the moment your landlord knows about the problem. For a total loss of heating or hot water, that window is short. Expect a response within 24 hours and an engineer within 24 to 48 hours. The full repair can take longer if parts are on order, but your landlord is expected to keep chasing it and to provide temporary heaters in the meantime.
Context shrinks the window further. No heating in January is a health hazard, and a household with young children, older people, or anyone whose health worsens in the cold makes delay even harder to defend. No hot water means no proper washing, so it stays urgent even in summer.
"We've booked someone for three weeks' time" is not compliance. Keep that message. It is evidence of the delay you can later claim for.
How to report an excess cold home to the council
Under Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004, your local council can inspect your home using the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS). Excess cold is one of the hazards the system scores, and a home that cannot be heated in cold months will often score as a category 1 hazard, the most serious band. When a council finds a category 1 hazard it must take action, usually by serving an improvement notice that legally requires the works.
Ignoring that notice became more expensive on 1 May 2026. Under the Renters' Rights Act 2025 enforcement changes, a landlord who fails to comply with an improvement notice now faces a civil penalty of up to £40,000 or prosecution. The council route costs you nothing, and our guide on how to report a landlord to the council walks through it step by step.
Can you claim back heater costs, hotel stays and higher bills?
Yes. Reasonable costs you incur because the heating or hot water failed can be claimed as special damages, on top of any compensation for the discomfort itself. That includes plug-in heaters, the higher electricity bill from running them, laundrette and gym-shower costs, and a hotel stay if the home became unliveable in a cold snap.
Two habits protect these claims. Keep every receipt, and where you can, tell your landlord in writing before you spend, for example "the flat is at 12°C so we are buying two electric heaters today". Courts expect the spending to be proportionate, so a mid-range heater is recoverable and a five-star hotel probably is not.
How much compensation for weeks without heating or hot water?
Compensation for the loss of comfort is usually calculated as a percentage of your rent for the period the problem went unfixed. For a total loss of heating in winter, awards commonly sit in the 25% to 50% range. On a £1,300 per month tenancy the weekly rent works out at £300, so six weeks without heating at a third of the rent is roughly £600, before you add the receipts above.
The clock runs from when your landlord had written notice to when the repair was done, which is why the paper trail below matters more than anything else. Our guide on how much a disrepair claim is worth covers the wider calculation.
What to do today if your home has no heating or hot water
- Report it in writing. Email or WhatsApp your landlord or agent now, stating the date it stopped, what is affected (heating, hot water or both) and who lives in the home. This starts the legal clock.
- Set a deadline. Ask for an engineer within 48 hours. A specific date makes the delay measurable.
- Take thermometer readings. A cheap room thermometer, photographed morning and evening in each room, is persuasive evidence of an excess cold hazard.
- Photograph the fault. The boiler error code, the pressure gauge, a stone-cold radiator.
- Follow up and save everything. Every ignored message strengthens the claim.
If the deadline passes, report the hazard to your council's environmental health team and start a disrepair claim. Both routes can run at the same time. And keep paying rent. Withholding it creates arrears your landlord can use against you, even when they are plainly at fault.
Every day without heat has a value in law. Remedy can review your messages and dates for free, tell you what the wait was worth, and draft the letter that claims it back.
