Housing Advice

We recognise that the health, safety, and wellbeing of people in our communities is vital, so the Council is committed to improving housing conditions for residents in our region.

A number of residents have reported that Landlords are not dealing promptly with disrepair in our communities.

What do you need to do?

In most cases, it is helpful if you have already reported the disrepair to the landlord before contacting us. It is important that you contact your landlord to report the problem before contacting us. 

However, we appreciate there may be circumstances where this is not possible or desirable.

See below for details on how to report the issue.

Reporting housing disrepair to the Council

Report Housing Disrepair

The form will ask for a lot of information, this is so our housing team get as much information as possible up front, allowing them to act immediately where possible.

You will be asked to upload the following, so you may want to have these prepared before you start, as you cannot save the form.

• Images of the disrepair issue (if safe to do so)
• Any proof of correspondence with your landlord about the issue
• Any other relevant documentation

These documents are not mandatory, but really help our team assess your case.

In addition, you will be asked for the following details

• Who is your landlord? For private landlords, please give us as much contact information as possible
• Housing Association details. If you rent through an agency, or housing management company, please provide their details instead.
• What is the nature of the disrepair issue? This can include multiple hazards and issues.
• Any contact you have had with your landlord about the issue.
• What sort of property do you live in?
• Who lives in the household?
• This is general household information; we will only ask for the personal details of the person filling in the form.

How can the Council help?

In most instances, disrepair issues can be resolved before the Council needs to take formal action.

We will first contact you and discuss further steps and any actions we are able to take.

We may need to arrange an inspection of your property to properly understand the nature of the issues you have reported.

Where you have given us permission to do so, we will contact your landlord and any other relevant parties, to inform them of their responsibilities to you as a tenant and arrange a plan for resolving the issues.

If the landlord does not resolve the issue in a timely manner, the Council can start formal enforcement procedures against them.

In some cases, depending on the hazard, or the people affected in the household, the Council can use urgent enforcement powers to force the landlord to action.