Repairs and disrepair — Royal Borough of Greenwich

Before thinking about any legal claim, complain to the council. It is free, you do not need anyone to do it for you, and it is often the fastest way to get repairs moving. It also creates a written record of what you reported and when — the evidence any claim relies on later.

Report the repair itself first, on the council's published numbers.^[10]

• A new repair, weekdays: freephone 0808 175 6915, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.^[10]
• An existing repair, weekdays: the repairs line, 020 8921 8900, in the same hours.^[10]
• Urgent, outside those hours or at the weekend: 020 8854 8888.^[10]

If reporting has not fixed it, make a formal complaint through the council's complaints process.

Greenwich's complaints process. File a housing complaint through the council's "Complain about us as your landlord" route.^[8] The council runs a two-stage process, aligned to the Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code. Both stages are acknowledged within 5 working days; a stage 1 complaint gets a full response within 10 working days of that acknowledgement, and if you are unhappy with the answer you can ask for a stage 2 review, answered within 20 working days of its own acknowledgement.^[8] Both stages usually need to be completed before the Housing Ombudsman can formally investigate.^[8]

If the complaint doesn't fix it: the Housing Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is free and independent, and you can contact it for advice at any point. It can order the council to carry out repairs, apologise and pay you compensation — and nobody takes a fee or a share of anything it awards you. Shelter and Citizens Advice also offer free housing advice, and a local law centre can tell you whether you qualify for legal aid. For disrepair, legal aid can be available where there is a serious risk to health or safety — though not normally for a compensation-only claim.

Complaining and claiming are not either/or. Complaining first is the right move in almost every case — and if the repairs still don't happen, the record you have built makes any claim stronger, not weaker.

Council tenants have a legal right to a home that's kept in repair. If the Royal Borough of Greenwich has known about a problem for a while and hasn't sorted it, that failure can be grounds for a disrepair claim — and, separately, grounds to escalate a complaint.

Repairs a landlord is responsible for — "disrepair" in the legal sense — commonly include:

• damp, mould or condensation
• a leak, whether from the roof, a pipe, or the flat above
• no heating or hot water
• windows or doors that let in draughts or won't shut properly
• structural problems: cracked walls, sagging ceilings, unsafe floors
• electrical faults.

Four things generally need to be true for a claim against Greenwich to stand up:

1. You're a council tenant of the Royal Borough of Greenwich — a housing association or private-sector tenancy is a claim against that landlord instead.
2. You told the council, and it knew. A report — by phone, in writing, or logged as a repair reference — is what starts the clock; keep a record of every contact.
3. A reasonable amount of time passed without it being fixed. There's no single cut-off, but the council's own published targets (see the repairs FAQ) are a useful yardstick.
4. The disrepair actually affected you — your health, your belongings, or your ability to use part of your home.

Leaseholders in council-owned blocks have a different, related route rather than a standard tenant's disrepair claim.

Two separate things sit behind a disrepair claim: forcing the repair itself, and putting a value on what living with it has meant for you. Depending on the facts of your case, a claim can address:

• the outstanding repair — the court can order the Royal Borough of Greenwich to carry it out;
• the disruption — compensation for the stress and inconvenience of living with an unfixed problem;
• a health impact — such as a respiratory condition that damp or mould has made worse;
• ruined possessions — carpets, furniture, clothes or appliances damaged by leaks, damp or mould;
• space you couldn't use — a room made unsafe or unusable, like a damp bedroom or an unusable bathroom.

There's no standard figure, and any adviser who quotes one before seeing your evidence should be treated with caution. What a claim is actually worth turns entirely on the record: what you reported, when, and what the council did next.

First, a few questions. Tell us what the problem is, when you first reported it to the council, how it responded (or didn't), and what it's meant for your household day to day. Anything you've kept — photos, repair reference numbers, complaint replies — strengthens your answers.

Then, a free written view. We check your situation against the legal tests set out on this page and tell you plainly whether a claim looks realistic, and how strong. There's no charge and no obligation for this step.

If it stacks up, an independent solicitor takes over. Where a case needs legal representation, we're upfront about that before you agree to anything, and hand you to an independent, regulated law firm — not us — to run it: formal notice to the council, usually an independent inspection of the property, and negotiation from there. Court is the exception rather than the rule; most disrepair claims settle beforehand.

Time limits matter. A disrepair claim is normally treated as a contract claim, with a limitation period of six years.^[14] Where part of the claim is for an injury to health — damp-related breathing problems, for instance — that element usually carries a shorter, three-year limit instead.^[14] Don't assume an old problem is out of time without checking. Claims typically run over months, not weeks, so keep reporting the fault and pushing the council to fix it while any claim is ongoing.