Repairs and disrepair — Swindon Borough Council

Before thinking about any legal claim, report the problem and 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 first. Request repairs in your own home through your My Housing Tenancy online account (opens in new tab), which lets you pick an appointment and keeps a record of what you reported. If you cannot go online, call the contact centre on 01793 445500; the council's contact page gives its opening hours. The council's repairs timescales page shows whether each repair trade is running on time.^[13]

In an emergency, phone. For an uncontrollable leak, bare wires or a home you cannot secure, call 01793 445500. The council says this number also works outside normal working hours.^[13] For a gas leak, call the National Gas Emergency Service. If life is at risk, call 999.

Report damp and mould online or on 01793 445500. The council says it may clean the affected area, send a surveyor to find the cause, or order works.^[17]

Then make a formal complaint if reporting has not fixed it. Use the council's online tenants' complaint form (opens in new tab), or call 01793 445500 if you cannot go online.^[19] The council acknowledges a complaint within 5 working days, then aims to reply at stage one within 10 working days.^[19] If you are unhappy with the answer, ask for stage two within 25 working days; a senior manager aims to reply within 20 working days.^[19] Both stages usually need to be completed before the Housing Ombudsman can formally investigate.

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.

Council tenants have a legal right to a home that's kept in repair. If Swindon Borough Council 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 caused by a fault such as a leak or broken ventilation
• 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, or crumbling brickwork that lets water in
• electrical faults.

Four things generally need to be true for a claim against Swindon Borough Council to stand up:

1. You're a council tenant of Swindon Borough Council — a housing association or private tenancy is a claim against that landlord instead.
2. You told the council, and it knew. A report — online, by phone, 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 Swindon Borough Council 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 mouldy 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 Swindon Borough Council, how the council 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.^[21] 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.^[21] 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.