Repairs and disrepair — West Northamptonshire Council

Before thinking about any legal claim, report the problem and complain. It is free, 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 to NPH. Northamptonshire Partnership Homes (NPH) takes repairs for the council, and says to keep contacting it as usual while the council brings the service back in-house.^[13] Call 0300 330 7003, Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm, or report online through a Your NPH (opens in new tab) account, which you set up with your tenancy reference number.^[26] NPH asks you to report damp and mould the same way.^[26] Ask for a repair reference and keep it.

Emergency repairs: phone. Outside those hours, at weekends and on bank holidays, the same number takes emergency repairs.^[26] If you smell gas, call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999.^[26] For a life-threatening situation, call 999.

Then make a formal complaint if reporting has not fixed it. NPH handles housing complaints for the council. Use the council's housing complaint form (opens in new tab), call 0300 330 7003, or email HousingComplaints@nph.org.uk.^[19] The process has two stages:

• Stage 1 — acknowledged within 5 working days, with a full response within 10 working days after that.^[19]
• Stage 2 — NPH's current policy gives you 28 working days from the Stage 1 reply to ask; its web page still says 21 days, so ask as soon as you can. It is acknowledged within 5 working days, with a response within 20 working days after that.^[19]

If the complaint doesn't fix it: the Housing Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is free and independent. It will usually expect the landlord's process to be finished before it formally investigates. It can order repairs, an apology and compensation — and nobody takes a fee or a share of anything it awards you.

Free advice. 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 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 defect, such as a leaking roof, an overflowing gutter or poor ventilation
• a leak, whether from the roof, a pipe, or the flat above
• no heating or hot water
• holes or gaps that let pests in
• 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 the council to stand up:

1. You're a council tenant of West Northamptonshire Council. Your home is managed by NPH, but the council is your landlord, so a claim is against the council.^[18] A housing association or private tenancy is a claim against that landlord instead.
2. You told your landlord, and it knew. A report to NPH — by phone or online, logged with 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 NPH's own published targets (see the FAQ on how long repairs take) are a useful yardstick.
4. The disrepair actually affected you — your health, your belongings, or your ability to use part of your home.

NPH's complaints policy treats its complaints process as the first step before a disrepair claim, so a complaint on record matters.^[19]

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 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 and NPH did next.

First, a few questions. Tell us what the problem is, when you first reported it, how NPH 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.^[34] 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.^[34] 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 for it to be fixed while any claim is ongoing.