Do landlords have to fix damp and mould?

The short, honest answer

If you rent your home and there’s damp or mould caused by the condition of the building — a leak, penetrating damp through a wall, failed damp-proofing, or a home that simply can’t be kept dry — then your landlord has a legal duty to fix it. This is true for private landlords, councils and housing associations alike.

The grey area is condensation, which is the most common form of damp in Croydon homes. We’ll be straight about that below: condensation can be partly affected by how a home is used, but a landlord still has to provide a property that can realistically be kept free of damp and mould.

The law that makes landlords responsible

Two pieces of law do most of the work:

• Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 requires landlords to keep the structure and exterior of the property in repair — roofs, walls, windows, gutters, pipes. If damp comes from disrepair to any of these, fixing it is the landlord’s job.
• The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 requires the home to be fit to live in for the whole tenancy. Serious damp and mould make a home unfit, so the landlord must put it right. Crucially, this Act lets the tenant take the landlord to court directly if they don’t.

On top of this, the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) lets the council inspect and force action where damp is a serious hazard — more on that below.

The “it’s your lifestyle” excuse — and when it doesn’t wash

Many tenants are told the mould is their own fault for “not ventilating” or “drying washing indoors.” Sometimes there’s a grain of truth — but it is not a free pass for the landlord. Ask one question: could a reasonable household keep this home free of damp?

If the answer is no — because there are no working extractor fans in the kitchen and bathroom, the walls are cold and uninsulated, windows don’t open or have no trickle vents, or there’s a defect letting water in — then the cause is the building, and that’s the landlord’s responsibility to remedy, regardless of how the tenant lives.

Why this comes up so often in Croydon

Croydon has a lot of exactly the housing where this argument plays out:

• Victorian and Edwardian terraces in Thornton Heath, Selhurst, South Norwood and Addiscombe, with solid walls (no cavity) that stay cold and attract condensation.
• Converted flats where a single chimney or shared wall was never properly ventilated.
• 1960s–70s blocks with cold concrete surfaces where moist air condenses in corners and behind furniture.

In homes like these, “rising damp” is frequently misdiagnosed — the real culprit is usually condensation or penetrating damp, and the fix (ventilation, insulation, repair) is the landlord’s to make.

What a tenant should do

1. Report it in writing — email or a letter, not just a phone call — describing the damp, where it is, and any health effects. Keep a copy. (See our step-by-step guide to reporting damp to your landlord.)
2. Take dated photos every week or two so you can show it’s persistent or getting worse.
3. Give a reasonable time to act, then escalate to Croydon Council’s environmental health team if nothing happens.
4. Get free help from Shelter or Citizens Advice if you’re stuck.

What a landlord should do

Don’t guess, and don’t paint over it. Get the real cause diagnosed, fix that cause, and keep a written record that you investigated and acted. That record is your best protection if a tenant complains to the council or takes action — and as damp duties tighten across the rented sector, a documented, surveyor-led response is exactly what’s expected.