Repairs, damp and mould policy

How to report a repair

Tell us what is wrong, where in the home it is, and whether it makes any part of the home unusable or unsafe. A photograph helps and is never required.

• Use the repairs route on our contact page.
• Tell any member of staff. They pass it on; it is not your job to find the right person.
• Somebody can report it for you — a relative, a support worker, an advocate.

We will tell you that we have received it, what we think it is, and what happens next. If we need to get into your home we will arrange a time with you.

The residents page gathers the routes a resident needs in one place — repairs, safety, support and complaints.

TBD — the out-of-hours number. The out-of-hours emergency repairs number and the hours it covers. A resident with no heating on a Friday night is the case this entire policy is about, and it is the one thing this page cannot yet tell them. Operations has to supply the number and the hours.

Report it before you complain. A first report is not a complaint, and going straight to the complaints process usually delays the repair. If the repair then does not happen, or takes too long, or you are treated badly, that is a complaint and our complaints policy sets out the two stages and the time limits.

What we are responsible for

Section 11 puts a repairing obligation on the landlord in most residential tenancies. It cannot be contracted out of, and nothing in a tenancy agreement or on this website reduces it. It covers:

• The structure and exterior of the home — including drains, gutters and external pipes.
• The installations for supplying water, gas and electricity, and for sanitation: basins, sinks, baths and toilets.
• The installations for space heating and heating water — the boiler, the radiators, the immersion.

Where a home is in a shared building, that duty reaches the parts of the building and the installations we own or control, not only the inside of your own front door.

The same section gives us a right to come in at reasonable times of the day, on twenty-four hours’ notice in writing, to look at the state of repair. We will not let ourselves in without arranging it with you first, other than in a genuine emergency where waiting would put somebody at risk or cause serious damage — and if that happens we will tell you afterwards what we did and why.

What you are responsible for

Said plainly, and kept short, because a long list here reads as a landlord building an excuse.

• Telling us when something is wrong, as soon as you notice it.
• Letting us in to inspect and to do the work, once we have arranged a time.
• Your own belongings and your own furniture.
• Replacing your own light bulbs, and testing your smoke alarm.
• Keeping the home reasonably clean and not damaging it deliberately.

If damage is caused deliberately, or by somebody you let into the home, we may ask you to pay for the repair. We will still do the repair first if the home is unsafe, and we will tell you in writing what we say you owe and why, so you can challenge it.

Damp and mould is not on this list. That is not an accident, and the clause below explains why.

How quickly we respond

Repairs are sorted by how much harm the fault can do, not by who reported it. Three categories:

Emergency

Something that puts somebody at risk or is causing serious damage now — no heating or hot water in cold weather, a leak we cannot stop, an electrical fault, a fire or security risk, a smell of gas. The first job is to make it safe; the full repair may follow afterwards.

Urgent

Something that makes part of the home unusable but is not dangerous — a broken toilet where there is another one, an appliance failure, a fault that is getting worse.

Routine

Everything else, done on a planned visit.

TBD — we do not publish a response time for any of these categories yet. The repair priority categories and the response time in hours against each — emergency, urgent and routine. Operations has to confirm them against a rota that exists, and they must be the same numbers as the property management service page and the repairs contact route. Until then no hour figure appears anywhere on this site. We would rather publish nothing than publish a number we cannot yet staff: a timescale on a landlord’s website is a commitment measured against it in an ombudsman investigation and in court, and a missed one is evidence, not a marketing miss.

What we will tell you, in the meantime, is when we are actually coming, and we will tell you again if that changes.

Damp and mould

Report damp or mould. Do not wait, and do not clean it and say nothing. We treat it as a fault in the building until we have established otherwise, and it is dealt with as a repair, not as a conversation about how you live.

You will not be told it is your fault, you will not be told to open the windows and leave it there, and you will not be blamed for drying washing indoors in a home that has nowhere else to dry it. Mould grows where there is moisture and not enough ventilation or warmth, and all three of those are usually something about the building or what it costs to heat it.

What we do:

1. Come and look. A visit, not a form. We record what we find, in each affected room, and whether anybody in the home has a health condition that makes it more serious.
2. Find the cause. Penetrating damp from outside, rising damp, a leak, a cold bridge, a failed or undersized extractor fan, insufficient insulation, or condensation. These are different faults with different fixes and they are not interchangeable.
3. Treat what is there and fix the cause. Washing off and painting over mould without fixing why it grew is not a repair. It comes back, usually worse, and it wastes the months in between.
4. Come back and check. We will tell you when, and we will write down what we found.
5. Move you if we have to. Where the work cannot be done with you living there, or the home is not safe to live in meanwhile, finding you somewhere else to stay is our problem and our cost, not yours.

You do not have to work out which kind it is before you tell us. Damp, mould and condensation explains how they differ and what has to happen once a report is made.

A home has to be fit to live in for as long as you live there, and freedom from damp is one of the things that is judged on. That is the next clause, and it is enforceable by you directly.

Your home must be fit to live in

This Act puts a term into most residential tenancies: the home must be fit for human habitation when the tenancy starts and for as long as it lasts. It has applied to all periodic tenancies since 20 March 2020.

Fitness is judged on things including:

• repair, stability, and freedom from damp;
• internal arrangement, natural lighting and ventilation;
• water supply, drainage and sanitary conveniences;
• facilities for preparing and cooking food and for disposing of waste water;
• and any hazard prescribed under the housing health and safety rating system.

You can enforce this yourself, in the county court, without needing the council to be involved at all. A court can order us to do the work and order us to pay damages. That is one of the few housing condition duties a resident can act on directly, it applies to us now, and it does not depend on what register we are on. There are limited exceptions — unfitness caused by the tenant’s own behaviour, events outside anyone’s control, and work that needs a third party’s consent we cannot get.

It applies to tenancies. Where somebody occupies under a genuine licence rather than a tenancy the position is different, and we will tell you which one you have — it is decided by how the accommodation actually works, not by what the agreement is called.

The council can inspect your home

Your council can inspect any home in its area and assess the hazards in it using the housing health and safety rating system. If it finds a serious hazard it has a duty to act, and it can serve a notice requiring us to do the work, prohibit the home from being used, or do emergency work itself and charge us.

You can ask them to inspect at any time. You do not need our agreement, and you do not have to have complained to us first — though telling us first usually gets it fixed faster. We will not treat a call to the council as a reason to treat you differently.

The system was reformed this year. New statutory operating and enforcement guidance was published on 23 June 2026, replacing the 2006 guidance: the hazards have been consolidated from twenty-nine to twenty-one, and the old A to J bands have been replaced by low, medium and high scores. The framework is unchanged — Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004 — and it has been reformed rather than replaced.

As the organisation managing the property, we are the ones a notice is served on. That is the right way round and we are not going to point at the owner of the building.

Awaab’s Law, and whether it applies to us

Awaab’s Law sets legal deadlines for a landlord to investigate and make safe hazards in someone’s home, including damp and mould. It works by putting a term into social housing tenancy agreements — the mechanism sits in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 as amended by the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, with the actual duties in the 2025 Regulations named above.

What it requires of the landlords it binds. An emergency hazard must be investigated within twenty-four hours and made safe within twenty-four hours of the investigation concluding. A significant hazard must be investigated within ten working days and made safe within five working days of the investigation concluding. In both cases a written summary of the findings goes to the resident within three working days of the investigation ending, and where the work cannot be completed in time the landlord must offer suitable alternative accommodation at its own expense for everyone in the household.

When it came in. Phase 1 has applied since 27 October 2025: all emergency hazards, and damp and mould presenting a significant risk of harm. Phase 2 comes into force on 30 November 2026 and extends the same timescales to excess cold, excess heat, falls, structural collapse, fire and explosion, electrical hazards, and hygiene and pests. A third phase follows in 2027 covering the remaining hazards.

Who it binds — and it is not us. It binds registered providers of social housing: private registered providers, which are usually housing associations, and local authorities. It applies where the home is let under a tenancy, and it does not reach accommodation occupied under a licence. Bluebell Housing is a private landlord and is not a registered provider of social housing, so Awaab’s Law does not apply to us today.

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 provides for it to be extended to the private rented sector. The timescales for that are still subject to consultation and no commencement date has been set. When one is set, it will apply to us and this page will be rewritten.

TBD — whether we adopt those timescales voluntarily in the meantime. Whether Bluebell adopts the Awaab's Law investigation and make-safe timescales as its own published service standard for damp, mould and emergency hazards, and from what date. It does not bind a private landlord today. Adopting it voluntarily is a good decision and a commissioner will ask; it may only be published once operations can evidence that it is met, because a missed published timescale is evidence against the organisation. We are not going to claim it on this page in advance of the decision. What we will say without any qualification is that the investigation and make-safe steps in the damp and mould clause above are what we do, whether or not a deadline is attached to them by law.

The safety checks we have to do

These intervals are set by law, they apply to a landlord like us now, and they are not service standards we chose.

Gas, every twelve months

Every gas appliance and flue checked by a Gas Safe registered engineer, with a record kept. You get a copy within twenty-eight days of the check, and a new resident gets one before moving in. Breaching this is a criminal offence, enforced by the Health and Safety Executive.

Electrics, at least every five years

The fixed electrical installation inspected and tested by a qualified person, producing an electrical installation condition report. You get a copy within twenty-eight days, the council within seven days of asking, and any remedial work the report requires is done within twenty-eight days or sooner if the report says so. These rules cover licences to occupy as well as tenancies, and there is no supported housing exclusion.

Alarms

At least one smoke alarm on every storey used as living accommodation, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room used as living accommodation with a fixed combustion appliance in it — gas cookers excepted. If you tell us an alarm is not working and it is not, we have to repair or replace it.

Legionella

We assess the risk from the water system and control it — keeping water at the right temperatures, flushing outlets after a home has been empty, removing redundant pipework. Shared bathrooms and long empty periods are exactly where this matters. There is no such thing as a legally required annual legionella certificate and we will not pretend there is.

Fire safety in shared buildings is a separate set of duties on us as the responsible person, including a recorded fire risk assessment. Ask for the assessment for your building and we will give it to you.

The safety checks in your home explains what each visit involves, how much notice you get, and why somebody has to come in.

TBD — whether every property in the portfolio is currently in date on every one of these checks. Publishing a blanket claim to full compliance requires a tracker that evidences it property by property, and that evidence is the client’s to supply.

If we do not put it right

You have four routes, and they do not cancel each other out. You can use more than one at the same time.

1. Complain to us. Two stages, with time limits, set out in our complaints policy.
2. Ask the council to inspect. Environmental health can serve a notice on us whatever we say about the repair.
3. Go to court. Under the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 a tenant can ask the county court to order the work and award damages. Get advice first — Citizens Advice, Shelter and law centres give it free and none of them works for us.
4. An ombudsman, where one has jurisdiction over us. Our complaints policy is honest about the fact that this is currently an open question, and says why.

Using any of them will not put your home at risk. Since 1 May 2026 there is no no-fault eviction: a landlord can only seek possession on a statutory ground and has to prove it to a court.

What is changing, and what we will not claim yet

Three changes are on their way and none of them is law for us today. We publish them because a commissioner asks, and because the honest version of “we are preparing for it” names the date it has not got.

Awaab’s Law in the private rented sector

Provided for by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. No date set.

The reformed Decent Homes Standard

Will apply to social and private rented homes from 2035, with exemptions expected for some supported and temporary accommodation. We will not say our homes “meet the Decent Homes Standard” as though that were a current legal requirement, because it is not one, and no certificate for it exists.

Supported housing licensing

The Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 is in force, but the licensing regime and the National Supported Housing Standards it provides for have not been made. There is no supported housing licence in England that anyone can hold today, so nobody holds one, including us.

About this policy

TBD — the date this policy was adopted, who owns it, when it was last reviewed and when it is next due. It has to be reviewed when the repair response times are confirmed, when Awaab’s Law is extended to the private rented sector, and on 30 November 2026 when the second phase of Awaab’s Law changes what the comparable regime requires of social landlords.