If the boiler in a rented home stops working, the repair is the landlord’s responsibility — not the tenant’s — and that has been the law since the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. What most people are actually unsure about is the detail: how quickly it has to be sorted, what counts as an emergency, who pays if the tenant caused it, and what a tenant can do when the calls stop being answered. Every September our phone starts ringing with exactly this, because the heating goes on for the first time in months and a lot of rental boilers do not come back. Here is how it really works, from someone who fixes these boilers across Bow, Barking and Dagenham.
Who is legally responsible for repairing a boiler in a rented property?
The landlord. Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 puts the duty to keep the installations for space heating and water heating in repair and proper working order on the landlord, and it cannot be signed away in the tenancy agreement. If a clause tries to make the tenant responsible for boiler repairs, that clause is not enforceable. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 reinforces it: a property has to be fit to live in for the whole of the tenancy, and a home with no heating in winter generally is not.
That covers the boiler, the radiators, the pipework, the hot water cylinder and the flue. It also covers gas safety more broadly — under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 the landlord must have every gas appliance and flue checked annually by a Gas Safe registered engineer and give the tenant a copy of the record. We cover that side of things in detail on our landlord gas safety certificate (CP12) page.
The tenant’s side of the bargain is smaller but real: report faults promptly, allow reasonable access for the repair, and use the appliance properly. A tenant who ignores a dripping boiler for three months and then reports water damage has weakened their own position considerably.
How quickly does a landlord have to fix a broken boiler?
There is no single number written into law for private tenancies. The standard is a “reasonable time”, judged against how serious the problem is, and that is deliberately flexible. In practice the sector works to something like this:
- Same day, treated as an emergency: a gas leak, a smell of gas, a suspected carbon monoxide issue, or a boiler that has been condemned. If you smell gas, ring the National Gas Emergency line on 0800 111 999 first, before anyone else.
- Urgent, within a day or so: total loss of heating and hot water, particularly between October and April, and particularly where there are young children, elderly residents or anyone with a health condition in the property.
- Routine, within a couple of weeks: a fault that is a nuisance rather than a loss of service — one cold radiator, a slow-filling bath, a boiler that needs topping up more often than it should.
Local authorities can and do act on the serious end of that list. Under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System, a home a tenant cannot keep warm can be assessed as an “excess cold” hazard, and the council’s environmental health team has the power to serve an improvement notice on the landlord. That is a slow route for a cold tenant, but it is a real one.
The honest advice for landlords is that speed is mostly a question of preparation. A boiler that has been serviced in September gets fixed on the day it is looked at, because the engineer already knows the appliance. A boiler nobody has touched in four years turns into a diagnosis, a part order and a second visit.
What actually goes wrong with rental boilers in East London?
This is where the local detail matters, because the housing stock across our patch is not uniform and neither are the faults.
Period conversions in Bow, Mile End and Stratford. A lot of E3 terraces were split into flats decades ago, and the boiler ended up wherever there was space — a hall cupboard, a bathroom, occasionally a loft. Long, badly lagged pipe runs and condensate pipes taken out through an external wall are the pattern here. Come the first frost, those condensate pipes freeze and the boiler shuts down, which is why our frozen condensate pipe guide gets more traffic in one December week than the rest of the year combined. Lagging that pipe in September costs almost nothing and prevents the classic January no-heating call.
Ex-council and interwar housing in Dagenham, Barking and Rainham. Larger systems, more radiators, and a fair number of properties where an old back boiler or a system boiler was swapped for a combi without the pipework being flushed. The sludge that gets left behind circulates for years, blocks the heat exchanger and gives you radiators that are cold at the bottom and a boiler that bangs. If that sounds familiar, our boiler banging and kettling guide explains what the noise is telling you.
Hard water, everywhere. East London and Essex sit in one of the hardest water areas in the country. Limescale builds up on the plate heat exchanger inside a combi boiler, and the first symptom is usually hot water that runs lukewarm at high flow, or a shower that swings hot and cold. In a rental this gets reported as “the shower is rubbish” rather than “the boiler needs attention”, so it drifts for months before anyone calls an engineer.
The pressure gauge nobody looks at. By far the most common thing we find in a rental with no heating is simply a system that has dropped below 1 bar. Tenants generally have not been shown the filling loop and are understandably wary of touching anything. It is worth walking a new tenant through it at check-in, or leaving a short note by the boiler — see our low boiler pressure guide. If the pressure keeps falling week after week, though, that is a leak and it needs an engineer, not a top-up.
What should a tenant do when the landlord will not fix it?
Put it in writing. A text or WhatsApp message is fine and is far better than a phone call nobody can later evidence — date it, describe the fault, and say plainly that there is no heating or no hot water. Keep photographs of the fault code on the display. If nothing happens, write again referencing the first message.
If the property is managed by an agent, escalate to the agency’s complaints procedure, then to the redress scheme the agent belongs to. Beyond that, the council’s private sector housing or environmental health team is the next step, and they take a home with no heating in winter seriously.
What tenants should not do is arrange a repair themselves and deduct the cost from the rent on instinct. “Repair and deduct” does exist, but it has strict procedural steps, and getting it wrong turns a heating problem into a rent-arrears problem. Take advice from Shelter or Citizens Advice before going anywhere near it.
How can landlords avoid the winter emergency call altogether?
Almost every rental breakdown we attend in October and November was visible in August. The pattern is that reliable: a boiler that was already noisy, already losing pressure, or already showing an intermittent fault code that cleared with a reset. Booking the annual gas safety check and the boiler service together in late summer covers the legal duty and the practical one in a single visit, and gives us a chance to flag the parts that are on the way out while there is time to order them calmly.
A few other things that pay for themselves in rentals: lag the condensate pipe before winter; fit a magnetic filter if the system has never been flushed; leave the boiler manual and a note about the pressure gauge in the property; and give tenants a direct number for gas issues so a small fault gets reported on day one instead of day thirty. If your property is in the RM postcodes, our Dagenham gas engineer page covers what we handle locally, and for anything already broken, our boiler repair service is the place to start.
Frequently asked questions
Can a landlord charge the tenant for a boiler repair?
Not for fair wear and tear or age-related failure — that is the landlord’s cost under Section 11. The exception is damage the tenant has actually caused, for example by tampering with the appliance or a DIY attempt at a repair. A tenant simply using the heating normally is never liable.
Is a landlord required to provide temporary heating while the boiler is being repaired?
There is no absolute statutory duty to supply portable heaters, but in cold weather it is expected as part of acting reasonably, and a landlord who refuses is on weak ground if the tenant complains to the council. Most good landlords and agents provide them without being asked.
Does a gas safety certificate mean the boiler will not break down?
No, and it is worth being clear about the difference. A CP12 confirms the appliance is safe on the day it was checked. A service goes further into how well the boiler is running and the condition of the parts that wear. Landlords need the safety check by law; the service is what actually reduces breakdowns.
What if the tenant will not let the engineer in?
The landlord still has to make reasonable efforts, and the law expects the tenant to allow access. Keep a written record of every appointment offered and every refusal — that record is what protects the landlord if a safety check lapses through no fault of their own.
How long should a boiler last in a rented property?
Broadly ten to fifteen years, though a hard-water area and a system that has never been flushed will shorten that. Once a boiler is past twelve years old and needing a second repair in a season, replacement usually works out better than another part — our boiler installation page sets out how we survey and quote for that.
If you are a landlord or tenant in East London and the heating has stopped, call or WhatsApp us on 07927 882561. We are Gas Safe registered, we confirm the cost before we start, and there is no obligation.
About the author: J. Ahmed is the founder of Gas First Ltd and a Gas Safe registered engineer (587401), working across East London since 2016.