Guidance for tenants

Essential guidance on renting

What to do if you have concerns about your rented home

If you are concerned that your rented home does not meet the required housing standards, you should in the first instance contact your landlord or managing agent.

We recommend that you use our Tenant Toolkit which provides letter templates and guidance to help you and your landlord/managing agent resolve your concerns.

All letting agents and property managers must be a member of a government approved property redress scheme. This means that tenants, prospective tenants and landlords in the private rented sector can complain to an independent person about poor service from letting agents and property managers.

Check if the agent/manager for your home is a member of one of the approved schemes and contact the scheme if you feel they are not acting appropriately.

Find out more about the Property Redress Scheme (PRS)

If you live in a House in Multiple Occupation, where you share facilities like the bathroom or kitchen with other residents, there are further requirements that apply. Find further information.

Once you have followed the above steps, if you feel that your landlord/managing agent is failing to take action to address the issues you have raised with them, you can make a complaint about the condition of your property to the Private Sector Housing team.

We will investigate this for you in a accordance with our published Private Sector Housing Enforcement and Civil Penalties policy.

Submit a complaint

Protection from eviction

You are entitled to raise concerns about your rented home with your landlord or property manager and to expect a professional response.

Some tenants worry that if they ask their landlord to deal with the concerns raised they may be asked to leave. Most landlords will not do this and would, in fact, prefer to know about the problem. However, if your landlord does threaten to end your tenancy, or takes any other unwanted action as a result of you raising the problem then you should contact us immediately.

Since October 2015 new tenancies have additional protection from eviction where the advice in our Tenant Toolkit is followed.

Other sources of advice

Page last reviewed: 3 September 2024

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