Landlord ignored our boiler for six weeks in January, showed up unannounced to "inspect" it the day after we threatened to contact the council
We moved into this flat in September, me and two flatmates, third floor of a Victorian conversion in the north of England. Everything seemed okay at first, the boiler was old but running. Then on January 4th it stopped producing hot water entirely. Still heated the radiators but nothing from the taps. We reported it to our landlord, a private individual who manages the property himself through a letting agent, via the official maintenance portal the same day. No response. We chased on day three with a follow-up email. Auto-reply saying he was "away until the 10th." Fine, understandable, except the 10th came and went with no contact. We followed up again on the 12th, the 16th, and the 21st. Each time either silence or a one-line reply saying he was "looking into it."
By week four we were boiling kettles to wash, which in January in a draughty Victorian flat is exactly as grim as it sounds. One of my flatmates has eczema and the lack of proper hot water was making it noticeably worse. We took photos, kept a log of every communication with dates and times, and looked up our rights under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 which states landlords must keep installations for water heating in repair and prope r working order. We drafted a formal letter citing the specific legislation and giving him 14 days to arrange repair before we contacted the local council's environmental health team to report a Category 1 hazard.
We sent the letter on a Thursday evening. On Friday morning at 8:47am he texted asking if he could "pop round to have a look" at the boiler. No prior notice, no scheduled time, just a text 45 minutes before he apparently planned to arrive. We told him visits required 24 hours written notice under our tenancy agreement and proposed three specific time slots later that week. He showed up anyway at 9:15am. We didn't answer the door.
The boiler engineer was booked by the following Tuesday and the repair was completed that Thursday, exactly seven weeks after we first reported the fault. The landlord sent a message afterwards saying he was sorry for the delay and that he hoped we understood he'd been "very busy." We said we understood, and that we'd be keeping all correspondence on file.