Not a metaphor. A rent repayment order is a real remedy in a real tribunal, and since 1 May 2026 the maximum has doubled from twelve months to twenty-four months of the rent you paid. It applies to unlicensed properties, illegal evictions, harassment and several new offences created this year. Most tenants have never heard of it, which is why most landlords who owe it are never asked.
We do not touch housing disrepair claims. Not the advice, not a survey, not an estimate of what it is worth, and not an introduction to a solicitor. If your problem is damp, mould, a broken boiler, leaks or a property in poor repair, this page cannot help you and we will not take your money.
The reason is that advising on, investigating or referring a housing disrepair claim is a regulated claims management activity under the Financial Services and Markets Act. Doing any of it without FCA authorisation is a criminal offence, and there is no exemption for surveyors or property consultants — the Act closes that door expressly. A great many firms marketing “housing disrepair compensation” are on the wrong side of that line, and the FCA opened a market study into exactly this in May 2026. We are not authorised, so we do not do it.
What you should do instead: Shelter and Citizens Advice both give free housing advice, and your council’s environmental health team can inspect and serve notices on your landlord at no cost to you. Those are the right first calls and they are better than anything we could sell you.
This covers the remedies that do not depend on disrepair — licensing offences, illegal eviction, harassment, deposit failures and prohibited fees. It gives you a range rather than a number, because tribunals exercise judgement and anyone quoting you a precise figure is guessing. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no form in front of it.
£0
It is an application to the First-tier Tribunal, not a court case. You do not need the landlord to have been convicted of anything first, you do not need a solicitor, and the tribunal’s own rules expressly allow you to be represented by someone who is not legally qualified. That last point is why we can do this part and not the disrepair part.
Usually a licensing failure. We check the council’s public licensing register, the HMO register, the planning history and the tenancy paperwork, and establish whether a licence was needed and whether one existed.
The whole rent for the relevant period, less any utilities the landlord paid that only benefited you, and less any housing benefit or universal credit element — only what you actually paid counts.
The tribunal decides what proportion of that rent fairly reflects how serious the offence was. Since Acheampong v Roman it no longer starts at 100%, so this is where the case is actually won.
Conduct of both sides, the landlord’s finances, previous convictions, any arrears or damage on your side. A landlord with a prior conviction on the right ground can be forced to pay the maximum.
Twenty-four months from the offence for anything on or after 1 May 2026, twelve months before that. Miss it and the remedy is gone entirely, however strong the case.
A rent repayment order is usually won or lost on a licensing question: was this an HMO, did the borough operate a selective or additional licensing scheme, was a licence in force on the relevant dates, and was the landlord or the rent-to-rent operator the person committing the offence. That is a property compliance question, and it is what the rest of this firm does all day for landlords. We already hold the borough-by-borough licensing knowledge that decides these cases.
Two honest limits. First, the tribunal will not award you the maximum just because you ask — recent decisions we have looked at range from about 15% to 75% of the rent for the period, and roughly half is a common starting point for a licensing offence with nothing else wrong. Second, you cannot recover the same loss twice: an award here and a damages claim elsewhere for the same period will be set against each other. Anyone promising you two years’ rent as a matter of course is selling, not advising.
This is the map. We have marked plainly which of these we can act on and which we cannot, because the line is not obvious and getting it wrong would be a criminal offence rather than a commercial mistake.
Up to 24 months’ rent
Unlicensed HMO or property, illegal eviction, harassment, breach of a council notice, banning order breach, and the new possession-ground offences. First-tier Tribunal, where non-lawyers may represent you.
1 to 3× the deposit
Section 214 Housing Act 2004. We assess and value it and prepare the evidence. It is a county court claim, so we cannot issue or run it — that part goes to a solicitor.
The amount you paid
Tenant Fees Act 2019. Recoverable at the First-tier Tribunal or through the council. Note there is no multiplier here — you get your actual money back, not compensation on top.
The evidence layer
Establishing whether a licence was required and whether one existed, on which dates, and who the responsible person was. This is a property compliance question and it is the foundation of most of the above.
Off limits to us
Advising on, investigating or referring a housing disrepair claim is regulated claims management activity requiring FCA authorisation. There is no exemption for surveyors or property consultants. Shelter, Citizens Advice and your council are the right route.
Solicitors only
Issuing and conducting proceedings in the county court is a reserved legal activity. An unregulated firm doing it commits a criminal offence, and the High Court has caught a property consultancy doing exactly that.
Two ways to pay for the tribunal work and you pick which. The difference matters: a fixed fee means we lose money by telling you your case is weak, which is the only circumstance in which you should believe us when we say it is strong.
We do not handle housing disrepair claims in any form. Not advice, not investigation, not a survey, not an estimate and not a referral. Advising on, investigating or referring a housing disrepair claim is a regulated claims management activity under the Regulated Activities Order; it requires FCA authorisation, which we do not hold, and section 327(9) of the Financial Services and Markets Act expressly removes the professional exemption that would otherwise apply to a firm like ours. For disrepair, damp and mould go to Shelter, Citizens Advice or your council’s environmental health team, all of which are free. We cannot conduct litigation. The First-tier Tribunal permits non-legally-qualified representatives, which is why we can act there. The county court does not, so deposit penalty claims and damages claims go to a solicitor. Fourteen days to change your mind on any paid service, as a distance contract with a consumer. Prices are the total; there is nothing added later.
Where you rented, when, and what went wrong. We will tell you whether there is a rent repayment order in it, roughly what it might be worth, and whether the deadline has gone — which on the twelve-month window it often has. If the answer is that you have nothing, you will get that answer just as quickly.
Four questions. We come back with whether there is a rent repayment order here, roughly what it might be worth, and whether the deadline has passed — which on a twelve-month window it often has.
You can apply after you have left — you do not have to still be living there.
Choose as many as apply. If disrepair is the main issue we will point you to free advice instead.
The borough matters enormously — licensing schemes differ street by street and come and go.
If there is nothing here we will tell you, and it will not have cost you anything. If the deadline has gone we will tell you that too, straight away, rather than taking a fee to find out.
Check it over. Tapping the button opens WhatsApp with this ready — nothing has been sent yet.
Send this on WhatsAppEvery one of these has a free tool on it. None of them asks for your details before it gives you an answer.
For tenants. The deposit is your money and the landlord has to prove every deduction — we build the case that says so.
Score every deduction against the rules adjudicators usefree, or £49 prepared →Is this property compliant right now — and could you actually get it back if you needed to?
The possession test, scored per propertyfrom £110 →Your outsourced compliance department. Certificates, licences, tenancy duties and local schemes, tracked per property.
Obligation register, twelve-month calendar and a start planfrom £9 a month →Because we are not allowed to, and a lot of the firms advertising it may not be either. Advising on a housing disrepair claim, investigating one, or referring a tenant to a solicitor for one is a regulated claims management activity under article 89G and 89J of the Regulated Activities Order. It needs FCA authorisation. Doing it without is an offence under section 23 of the Financial Services and Markets Act, carrying up to two years on indictment, and any agreement is unenforceable. There is no professional exemption for surveyors or property consultants — section 327(9) closes that door in terms. It catches more than people expect: a free referral is caught as squarely as a paid one, commissioning a damp survey to support a claim counts as investigating it, and even a web page inviting disrepair claims is a regulated financial promotion. The FCA opened a market study into this market in May 2026, partly to examine firms operating without the right permissions. We would rather be the firm that tells you this than one of the ones being studied.
The remedies that do not turn on disrepair, which is more than most tenants realise. Rent repayment orders are the big one: they are made by the First-tier Tribunal under the Housing and Planning Act 2016 for licensing offences, illegal eviction, harassment, breach of a council notice and, since 1 May 2026, several new offences around dishonest possession grounds. They are not a claims management activity because they are not a disrepair claim, and the tribunal’s own procedure rules expressly allow a party to be represented by someone who is not legally qualified. We can also assess a deposit protection penalty and recover prohibited fees. The common thread is that these are decided on property compliance facts — was a licence required, was one in force, who was the landlord on the relevant dates — which is what the rest of this firm does for a living.
Less than the maximum, usually, and we would rather set that expectation now. The Upper Tribunal in Acheampong v Roman set out the approach: take the whole rent for the period, deduct any utilities the landlord paid that benefited only you, decide what proportion fairly reflects the seriousness of the offence, then adjust for the conduct of both sides and the landlord’s finances. Importantly it rejected the older practice of starting at 100%. In decisions we have read, awards have ranged from about 15% to 75% of the rent for the period, with something around half being a common starting point for a licensing offence with nothing else wrong. On published data the average award has run at roughly £4,000 to £4,500 per applicant, though that is from before the maximum doubled. Housing benefit and universal credit elements of your rent are excluded, so only what you actually paid counts.
No, and this is the single most useful thing on this page. You do not need a conviction, a council prosecution, or any prior enforcement at all — the tribunal decides for itself, to the criminal standard, whether the offence was committed. A prior conviction helps rather than being a precondition: where the landlord has already been convicted or fined, section 46 can compel the tribunal to award the maximum. Read the small print on that though, because it does not apply on every ground, and notably not on a tenant’s own application over an unlicensed HMO or house, which are the commonest grounds of all. There is also an escape where exceptional circumstances would make the maximum unreasonable.
Not any more, if the offence was on or after 1 May 2026. The Supreme Court held in Rakusen v Jepsen that a rent repayment order could only be made against your immediate landlord, which let rent-to-rent operators absorb the liability while the property owner stayed out of it — and the operator was frequently a company with nothing in it. The Renters’ Rights Act reversed that: an order can now be made against a superior landlord regardless of who you actually paid, multiple landlords are jointly and severally liable for the full amount, and company officers can be caught personally. For offences before 1 May 2026 the old position still applies, so the date matters enormously here.
Both options are on the page above and you choose. A fixed fee of £750 is the simple one: you pay it whatever happens, and it is the honest choice if you want our incentives pointed at telling you the truth about a weak case. A success fee of 20% of what you actually recover is available as an alternative, and it has to be documented as a compliant damages-based agreement — there is a statutory cap of 50% of recoveries and strict formal requirements, and an agreement that fails them is simply unenforceable. We keep well under the cap. What we will not do is take a percentage and also charge fees along the way, or take a percentage on the disrepair side, which we are not permitted to touch at all.
Twenty-four months from the offence, if it was committed on or after 1 May 2026. Twelve months if it was before. That is a hard statutory deadline with no discretion to extend, and it is what kills most of these cases rather than any weakness on the merits. For a continuing offence, such as a property that stayed unlicensed for a year, the clock runs from the last date of the offence, which often buys more time than people assume. You can apply after you have moved out, and you do not need to still be a tenant. If you think something may have happened, find out now — the assessment is free and a fortnight’s delay has ended better cases than yours.
Fair question, and you should ask it. Fraser Bond sells compliance services to landlords and letting agents, and this page and the deposit page are the only two where we act for the tenant. Two things. We will not take a case against a landlord or agent who is a client of ours, and we will tell you at the outset if that is the position rather than after you have paid. And the reason we are useful here is exactly that we spend the rest of our time on the other side: we know which boroughs run selective licensing, what an HMO licence application looks like, and how a rent-to-rent structure is put together, because we set them up. That knowledge is what decides a rent repayment order. It also means our interests are narrower than they look, so read the fee page and hold us to it.
Twenty-four months from the offence for anything on or after 1 May 2026, and only twelve months before that. A strong case filed a week late is worth exactly nothing, and there is no discretion to extend it. If you think something happened, find out now rather than when you get round to it.
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