Making a complaint about your rented home?

Making a complaint about your rented home

Your landlord should provide you with a safe place to live. No home can be completely hazard free, but you should not be expected to live in an environment that puts your health and safety at unnecessary risk.

We can help, but first you should contact your landlord to tell them what’s wrong and give them a chance to fix it. We strongly advise that you report any disrepair or safety issues to your landlord as soon as possible and put your complaint in writing. If you do, and your landlord does not provide a reasonable response within 14 days, you may receive some protection from retaliatory eviction.

Once you’ve made a complaint to the Council, we will make an appointment to visit you. We will assess your home using the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (“HHSRS”) to see if there are any health and safety concerns. The most common problems we find relate to fire and electrical safety, poor heating, a lack of hot water, damp and mould, and deficiencies that increase the risk of falls.

We may not be able to help, as we focus on the issues that put your health and safety at risk. However, if you have a genuine complaint, we will try to make it right using the statutory powers available to us. This may involve the council serving an enforcement notice on your landlord.

How to make a complaint

To make a complaint about the safety of your home, email us on housing.conditions@thanet.gov.uk or call us on 01843 577437.