Housing Law Advice Service
At Fairer Housing our ambition is to help as many tenants as we can to resolve problems with their homes. Please contact us via info@fairerhousing.org.uk to arrange an initial consultation with an advisor.
It is important to get legal advice as soon as possible as there may be time limits within which you must take action.
Area of Housing Law where we can help:
- General housing law: If you are having problems with your home or your landlord. If your landlord wants you to move out and you are in danger of losing your home, or you have serious disrepair or live in poor housing conditions (eg. Damp/mould), we can give you details of other advice specialists – for example Legal Aid providers or the Housing Loss Prevention Advice Service (HLPAS).
- Refunds of deposit: refunds from your landlord at the end of your tenancy, including advice on your deposit protection scheme’s ‘adjudication service’.
- Compensation if your landlord did not comply with the Deposit Protection Regulations: eg. If they did not protect your deposit or give you the proper information required. Compensation can be claimed before or after you have moved out of your home.
- Property Licensing: checking if your landlord is required to license your home with the Local Authority/Council and comply with their licensing standards (proper management, fire safety etc).
- Rent Repayment Orders (RROs): Applications to a Tribunal for a rent refund (RRO) if a landlord has committed certain offences, for example: did not license your home with the Local Authority when it should have been licensed, or unlawfully evicted you.
- Rent Increases: we can check if your landlord’s proposed increase in rent is lawful/valid, and help with applications to the Tribunal for it to decide what the maximum rent should be for your home.
- Renters Rights Act 2025: Phase 1 will come into force on 1 May 2026. This will bring in a lot of changes including more protection for renters in the private rented sector. We can advise you on what the new law means if you have a current ‘assured shorthold’ tenancy (ie. tenancies that started before 1 May 2026) or a new tenancy from 1 May 2026.
- Are you a tenant or a licensee: we can check if you are a licensee (for example, a lodger, or if you are a tenant) with all the rights of a tenant. This depends on what the actual situation is with your home, not on what your ‘tenancy agreement’ or ‘licence agreement’ or your landlord might say.
- Signposting: We can only provide advice on legal matters where our team have experience and expertise. If we are unable to assist you ourselves we will signpost you to another organisation that may be able to help.
Disclaimer – We are currently a small service, which means in periods of peak demand we may not be able to take on all the cases we would like to. In such circumstances, where we cannot take on your case, we may be able to give you ‘one-off advice’ to assist. If we are not able to assist, we won’t just leave you hanging, we will provide you with information on other organisations and sources of advice (for example, providers of free Legal Aid) if you are in danger of losing your home or if your home has serious disrepair/is in poor condition e.g. Damp/mould. The solicitors at Fairer Housing CIC are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)