The damp patch above your bed has grown all winter. Your landlord keeps promising to send someone, and nobody comes. If you rent in Wales, the law gives you something most renters have never heard of. On most occupation contracts, when a rented home is unfit for human habitation, rent is not payable for any day it stays that way.
What does fitness for human habitation mean in Wales?
Renters in Wales are contract-holders under occupation contracts, thanks to the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016. Tenancies signed before 1 December 2022 converted automatically on that date.
Section 91 of the Act requires your landlord to make sure the home is fit for human habitation on the day you move in and for the whole life of the contract. It covers secure contracts, periodic standard contracts, and fixed-term standard contracts made for less than 7 years, which is almost every renter in Wales, private or social. It is a fundamental term, so your landlord cannot write it out of the contract, and section 93 bans them from penalising you for relying on it.
Section 92 adds a separate repairing duty covering the structure, exterior and the installations for water, gas, electricity, sanitation and heating. Section 93 also makes the landlord put right any damage that repairs cause. A home can be in good repair and still be unfit, for example where condensation damp makes a bedroom unusable.
England has its own version, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018. If you rent there, our England fitness for human habitation guide covers it.
The 29 hazards that make a Welsh home unfit
Whether a home is fit is judged against the Renting Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) (Wales) Regulations 2022, which list 29 matters and circumstances a court must consider. Here is the full list, in the order the Regulations set it out.
Full list of the 29 fitness for human habitation hazards in Wales
- Damp, mites and mould or fungal growth
- Cold (excessively low temperatures)
- Heat (excessively high temperatures)
- Asbestos and manufactured mineral fibres
- Biocides (chemicals used to treat timber or mould)
- Carbon monoxide and fuel combustion products
- Lead
- Radiation (including radon gas)
- Uncombusted fuel gas (gas leaks)
- Volatile organic compounds
- Crowding and space
- Entry by intruders (a home you cannot keep secure)
- Lighting
- Noise
- Domestic hygiene, pests and refuse
- Food safety (inadequate kitchen facilities)
- Personal hygiene, sanitation and drainage
- Water supply
- Falls associated with baths and showers
- Falling on surfaces
- Falling on stairs, steps or ramps
- Falling between surfaces (falls from height)
- Electrical hazards
- Fire
- Flames and hot surfaces
- Collision and entrapment
- Explosions
- Position and operability of amenities (fittings you cannot reach or use safely)
- Structural collapse and falling elements
The list holds a few surprises. Hazard 1 covers house dust mites as well as mould. A front door that will not lock falls under hazard 12, entry by intruders, so a home you cannot keep secure can fail the fitness test. Noise, hazard 14, is about the building's sound insulation, not your neighbours' behaviour.
The Regulations set no score or threshold. If your landlord disagrees, a court decides whether the home is fit to live in, taking the listed hazards into account. A home can be unfit even though everything in it works. The bar cuts the other way too. A minor blemish, such as the slightly uneven floor the official guidance uses as its example, is highly unlikely on its own to make a home unfit. The Welsh Government's fitness guidance covers each hazard in turn.
Smoke alarm, carbon monoxide and electrical report rules for Welsh landlords
The 2022 Regulations also impose fixed requirements that leave no room for argument.
- Smoke alarms on every storey, wired to the mains and linked to each other. A battery alarm alone does not meet the requirement.
- A carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a gas appliance, an oil-fired appliance or a solid fuel burner.
- A valid electrical condition report (EICR) from an inspection no more than 5 years old. You must be given a copy within 14 days of your occupation date, and if the report calls for a retest sooner than 5 years, that earlier deadline applies.
Fail one of these and the Regulations treat the home as unfit for human habitation while the failure continues.
Do I have to pay rent if my home in Wales is unfit?
Regulation 11 of the Renting Homes (Supplementary Provisions) (Wales) Regulations 2022 writes this term into almost every occupation contract:
The contract-holder is not required to pay rent in respect of any day or part day during which the dwelling is unfit for human habitation.
Put plainly, if your home was unfit for 3 months at £900 a month, you can argue that £2,700 of rent was never legally due. Whether the rent stops from the first day, or only once the landlord knew, has not been tested, so report problems in writing straight away. Three cautions before you rely on the no-rent term.
First, this is a shield, not a refund. The term stops rent falling due, so it answers a landlord who sues you for arrears. In Beacon Cymru Group Ltd v Mitchell [2025] EWHC 2477 (Ch) the court dismissed contract-holders' claims to get paid rent back, mainly because they would have paid anyway, and because neither the Act nor the contract gives a right to reclaim rent already paid. The homes in that case counted as unfit only because electrical reports had not been handed over. Do not count on getting the money back. What you can still claim, separately, is compensation for living with the disrepair.
Second, do not stop paying rent on your own judgement. Whether the home was unfit, and for how long, is for a court to decide if the landlord disputes it. Get it wrong and you are in arrears, which is a ground for eviction.
Third, check your written statement. The no-rent term is a supplementary term, so it applies automatically unless your written statement modified or dropped it. Read yours.
Can my landlord evict me for complaining about repairs in Wales?
Welsh law gives you a defence. A section 173 notice is the Welsh no-fault notice. Under section 217 of the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, if you have relied on your landlord's fitness or repair duties and the court is satisfied that a possession claim on a section 173 notice or a landlord's break clause was made to avoid those duties, it can refuse to order possession. The landlord then cannot give you another notice of the same kind for six months from the court's refusal. A dated written complaint is the best evidence that you raised the problem, so send one.
And while your home is treated as unfit because your landlord has not fitted the required alarms or given you the electrical report, and it is the landlord's job to put that right, your landlord cannot give you a section 173 notice.
How to report an unfit home in Wales and what you can claim
Your landlord's duty to fix a problem starts when they become aware of it, and section 97 gives them a reasonable time to act. So tell them in writing, with photos and the date the problem started. Keep everything.
If nothing happens, escalate:
- Contact your council's environmental health team. They can inspect free of charge under the Housing Act 2004 and order the landlord to do the works. An improvement notice is strong evidence for any later claim.
- Send a formal letter before action. The Pre-Action Protocol for Housing Disrepair Cases in Wales expects you to set out the defects, the reporting history and what you want. Our guide to writing a letter before action covers the format.
- Claim in the county court. You can ask for an order that the works be done, which section 100 of the Act lets the court make, and compensation for the time you lived with the problem. If the landlord sues you for arrears, the no-rent term is your answer to the rent for the days the home was unfit, because that rent never fell due.
If you think your home fails the fitness test, Remedy can help you report the problem to your landlord in writing, ask your council's housing team to inspect, and keep a dated record of what happened. If your landlord is a council or housing association, Remedy can help you use its complaints process and then the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales instead. Remedy does not give a legal assessment of disrepair compensation or bring claims for you. If you want advice on compensation, you can contact a solicitor or advice charity listed in our legal help directory. Each one is independent, and you contact them directly.
