The damp patch above your bed has grown all winter. Your landlord keeps promising to send someone, and nobody comes. If you rent in Wales, the law gives you something most renters have never heard of. When a rented home is unfit for human habitation, rent is not payable for any day it stays that way.
Here is what counts as unfit, which safety requirements are automatic, and how to get your money back.
What fitness for human habitation means in Wales
Renters in Wales are contract-holders under occupation contracts, thanks to the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016. Tenancies signed before 1 December 2022 converted automatically on that date.
Section 91 of the Act requires your landlord to make sure the home is fit for human habitation on the day you move in and for the whole life of the contract. It covers almost every renter in Wales, private or social, on any contract shorter than 7 years. It is a fundamental term, so your landlord cannot write it out of the contract, and section 93 bans them from penalising you for relying on it.
Section 92 adds a separate repairing duty covering the structure, exterior and the installations for water, gas, electricity, sanitation and heating. A home can be in good repair and still be unfit, for example where condensation damp makes a bedroom unusable.
England has its own version, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018. If you rent there, our England fitness for human habitation guide covers it.
The 29 hazards that make a Welsh home unfit
Whether a home is fit is judged against the Renting Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) (Wales) Regulations 2022, which list 29 matters and circumstances a court must consider. Damp and mould growth sits first on the list and comes up most in real disputes. Excess cold, carbon monoxide, electrical hazards, fire, falls, pests and water supply problems follow close behind. The rarer end runs to asbestos, explosions and structural collapse.
The question is risk. If a hazard on the list poses a serious threat to your health or safety, the home can be unfit even though everything in it works. One serious hazard is enough.
Smoke alarm, carbon monoxide and electrical report rules for Welsh landlords
The 2022 Regulations also impose fixed requirements that leave no room for argument.
- Smoke alarms on every storey, wired to the mains and linked to each other. A battery alarm alone does not meet the requirement.
- A carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a gas appliance, an oil-fired appliance or a solid fuel burner.
- A valid electrical condition report (EICR) from an inspection no more than 5 years old, with a copy given to you.
Fail one of these and the Regulations treat the home as unfit for human habitation while the failure continues. No survey needed, no argument about severity. A rented house in Wales with no mains-wired smoke alarms is legally unfit until they are installed.
Do I have to pay rent if my home in Wales is unfit?
This is the part almost nobody knows. Regulation 11 of the Renting Homes (Supplementary Provisions) (Wales) Regulations 2022 writes this term into occupation contracts:
The contract-holder is not required to pay rent in respect of any day or part day during which the dwelling is unfit for human habitation.
Put plainly, if your home was unfit for 3 months at £900 a month, £2,700 of rent was never legally due. Two cautions before you act on that.
First, do not stop paying rent on your own judgement. Whether the home was unfit, and for how long, is for a court to decide if the landlord disputes it. Get it wrong and you are in arrears, which is a ground for eviction. The safer route is to keep paying and claim the money back.
Second, check your written statement. The no-rent term is a supplementary term, so it applies automatically unless your written statement modified or dropped it. Most contracts leave it untouched, but read yours.
How to report an unfit home in Wales and claim rent back
Your landlord's duty to fix a problem starts when they become aware of it, and section 97 gives them a reasonable time to act. So tell them in writing, with photos and the date the problem started. Keep everything.
If nothing happens, escalate:
- Contact your council's environmental health team. They can inspect free of charge under the Housing Act 2004 and order the landlord to do the works. An improvement notice is strong evidence for any later claim.
- Send a formal letter before action. The Pre-Action Protocol for Housing Disrepair Cases (Wales) expects you to set out the defects, the reporting history and what you want. Our guide to writing a letter before action covers the format.
- Claim in the county court. You can ask for an order that the works be done, compensation for the time you lived with the problem, and repayment of rent for any period the home was unfit.
The evidence that wins these cases is the same as in English damp claims, so our mould and damp guide is worth a read, though the law it describes is England's. In Wales, your claim rests on the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016.
Can my landlord evict me for complaining about repairs in Wales?
Welsh law expects this move and blocks it. Under section 217 of the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, if the court decides a no-fault possession claim was made to avoid the fitness or repair duties, it can refuse to order possession. A written complaint sent before any notice arrives is what makes that protection work.
If you think your home fails the fitness test, Remedy can check your occupation contract against the Welsh requirements and work out how much rent may be reclaimable for the time your home was unfit.
