The Landlord Gets a Head Start. The Tenant Gets a Queue: Folkestone & Hythe Council’s Damp and Mould Waiting List
shepwayvox
Tenants complain about damp, mould, electrical safety and questionable certificates. Folkestone & Hythe District Council puts them on a waiting list while landlords can be informed of the allegations and begin repairs before an independent inspection. With new financial penalties in force, an Ombudsman finding against the council and a replacement enforcement policy delayed until 2027, ShepwayVox asks whether the system is protecting tenants or inadvertently allowing landlords to escape accountability.
Imagine discovering mould spreading across your bathroom ceiling and bedroom windows. You’re concerned about inadequate heating, poor ventilation and whether your landlord has complied with basic safety requirements.
You exercise your legal right to complain to Folkestone & Hythe District Council (FHDC), expecting its Private Sector Housing team to investigate.
Instead, you’re placed on a waiting list.
The landlord is made aware of the complaints. Repairs begin. Extractor fans can be replaced, mould cleaned away, walls treated and equipment repaired before a council officer has independently recorded the original conditions.
By the time an inspector eventually arrives, the property may bear little resemblance to the home the tenant complained about.
The tenant has exercised their rights. The landlord has had an opportunity to change the evidence. And the council may still have no independent record of what existed before the work began.
That doesn’t mean landlords should leave dangerous conditions unrepaired. Quite the opposite.
But it raises a question that goes to the heart of housing enforcement: how can a council determine whether serious hazards existed, and whether penalties are appropriate, if its own procedures allow those hazards to disappear before they’re independently assessed?
ShepwayVox has examined an anonymised private-rented housing dispute, the council’s published policies, revised housing legislation and an Ombudsman decision that makes this concern particularly difficult for FHDC to dismiss.
Paragraph 4.3 of the policy, adopted in 2021, provides for non-urgent complaints to be assessed and placed on a waiting list. Tenants are told they’ll have to wait and are encouraged to resolve matters with their landlords in the meantime. Only complaints assessed as imminently dangerous are promised a visit within 24 hours.
Elsewhere, the policy says the council favours education, cooperation and agreement before formal enforcement. Paragraph 6.4 emphasises helping property owners comply without fear of unnecessary enforcement action.
All perfectly reasonable in theory. Landlords should be encouraged to meet their obligations. But cooperation cannot become a substitute for investigating serious hazards, particularly where the council hasn’t established how dangerous the conditions were before repairs began.
There’s another crucial detail.
FHDC’s website says that, in most circumstances, both the landlord and tenant will receive at least 24 hours’ notice before an inspection. It acknowledges that inspections without notifying the landlord may sometimes be appropriate, with the tenant’s consent. Statutory powers of entry also carry notice requirements and exceptions; advance notification isn’t inherently improper.
The difficulty arises when notification is combined with a lengthy waiting period.
A tenant complains. The landlord learns what’s being alleged. Repairs are undertaken. Yet the council’s independent inspection hasn’t happened.
By the time officers arrive, they may be assessing the property after remedial work rather than the conditions that prompted the original complaint.
It’s a system that deserves considerably more scrutiny than a polite assurance that the landlord is cooperating.
Six months waiting. Serious hazards discovered. An Ombudsman finding.
FHDC has already been criticised for an excessive inspection delay.
The tenant was placed on a waiting list. Despite further correspondence and complaints, the council didn’t inspect until May 2025.
Nearly six months later.
When officers finally visited, they identified both Category 1 and Category 2 hazards. The former are the more serious classification. The council subsequently served a hazard awareness notice.
The circumstances were particularly concerning because the tenant was involved in possession proceedings and needed independent evidence about the property’s condition.
The Ombudsman concluded that the delay was excessive. FHDC agreed to apologise and pay £200 for the frustration and anxiety caused.
The Ombudsman didn’t criticise the council’s eventual hazard assessment or enforcement decision. It also accepted that the authority had recruited additional staff, improved triage and substantially reduced its backlog.
But there’s another revealing detail.
During that complaint, FHDC had insisted that the tenant should allow the landlord’s agent to inspect the property, warning that refusing access could amount to obstruction. The Ombudsman found that advice wasn’t inappropriate because landlords need reasonable access to investigate and carry out repairs.
Nobody disputes that landlords need access.
Why should a tenant exercise their legal right to complain, only to sit on a waiting list while the landlord repairs defects and potentially removes crucial evidence before the council inspects?
The Ombudsman has already found that FHDC’s delays deprived a tenant of timely evidence during legal proceedings. Yet the council’s approach risks undermining its own enforcement powers by allowing hazards to disappear before they’re independently documented.
What happens when a landlord gets there first?
The documents examined by ShepwayVox concern a tenant who complained about damp, mould, heating, ventilation and safety certification.
The landlord subsequently prepared a damp and mould report. It acknowledged staining and mould affecting bathroom and bedroom areas, identified ageing ventilation and proposed several remedial measures.
These included replacing an extractor fan, treating mould and investigating an external overflow.
But the landlord’s assessment attributed the problem principally to indoor humidity.
That conclusion relied partly on environmental readings taken during unusually hot weather. No comprehensive winter temperature investigation, independent moisture survey or thermal-imaging assessment was documented.
The report was subsequently revised. Some works were recorded as completed; others were still being arranged.
Meanwhile, the tenant is challenging a proposed rent increase approaching 90%.
For the rent tribunal, the condition of the property at the relevant July 2026 valuation date is important. Repairs completed afterwards cannot simply be treated as though they already existed.
For housing enforcement, however, the concern goes further.
If mould is removed before the council records its extent, how does FHDC establish the original hazard? If the extractor is replaced, how does it determine whether inadequate ventilation contributed to prolonged exposure? If evidence of moisture disappears beneath fresh paint, what independent record remains?
Photographs, correspondence and the landlord’s own reports can still be evidence. Repairs don’t erase historical facts.
But the absence of an independent inspection can make disputed conditions much harder to establish.
And the longer a tenant waits, the greater the potential difficulty.
New £7,000 penalties make this a serious enforcement question
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 introduced substantial changes to private-sector housing enforcement.
From 22 June 2026, section 6A of the Housing Act 2004 gave local authorities a new power to impose a civil penalty of up to £7,000 when first taking qualifying enforcement action concerning a Category 1 hazard.
The legislation requires the council to consider whether removing the hazard would have been reasonably practicable for the responsible person. The penalty isn’t automatic, and the statutory exclusions and procedures must be satisfied.
This makes the timing of inspections particularly important.
Where a serious hazard is repaired before an officer establishes its existence, the council may lose the opportunity to identify it as a Category 1 hazard and take the particular enforcement action upon which section 6A depends.
That doesn’t necessarily extinguish liability for other historical breaches.
But it may make the new financial penalty more difficult, or impossible, to pursue on the evidence available.
A waiting list can therefore have consequences beyond inconvenience. It can affect whether the council ever establishes the grounds for using its enforcement powers.
FHDC adopted an updated Civil Penalties Policy in June, publishing a revised version in July 2026. The council expressly recognises that the new rules apply to Category 1 hazards which landlords could reasonably have addressed before the authority identified them.
That’s the contradiction demanding an answer.
The council has stronger enforcement powers, but its published waiting-list and informal-resolution approach may allow reported conditions to change before officers establish whether those powers should be considered.
Certificates, safety checks and a troubling paper trail
The case examined by ShepwayVox also involves disputed Energy Performance Certificates.
An older certificate had expired. Its replacement described a substantially larger building rather than expressly identifying the individual self-contained dwelling.
The two certificates also contained markedly different descriptions of insulation, glazing, heating controls and other characteristics.
The tenant maintains that no EPC was provided when the tenancy originally began.
Government guidance requires the certificate to reflect the accommodation being let, while the EPC regulations impose obligations concerning provision to prospective and new tenants. An inaccurate or inappropriate certificate may therefore require independent investigation, although these discrepancies don’t establish deliberate falsification.
Electrical documentation also warrants scrutiny.
A building-wide electrical report was classified satisfactory despite recording a C2 potentially dangerous defect affecting another flat. That doesn’t establish that the complaining tenant’s electrical installation was unsafe, but it raises questions about the report’s apparent internal inconsistency.
Gas safety records present a different problem. Recent certificates have been produced, but the disclosed material doesn’t establish a complete documentary history covering the tenant’s occupation.
The Health and Safety Executive confirms that landlords have duties to arrange annual safety checks and provide records to tenants, subject to the applicable statutory requirements.
These are distinct regulatory questions. They don’t automatically invalidate a tenancy or prohibit a rent increase.
They do, however, justify asking whether FHDC has considered the relevant evidence, referred matters to the appropriate regulators and properly assessed the actual condition of the accommodation.
Even the planning history raises questions
Historic planning records examined during the investigation identify a converted building containing both self-contained accommodation and units with shared facilities.
The landlord’s more recent description suggests an entirely self-contained arrangement.
Perhaps subsequent alterations explain the difference. But the planning and building-control history needs reconciling with what’s actually there, as what we’ve seen does not correspond with what the landlord says.
Under sections 254 and 257 of the Housing Act 2004, certain converted buildings can qualify as houses in multiple occupation, even where self-contained flats form part of the accommodation. HMO status doesn’t automatically establish a mandatory licensing requirement; the precise occupation, conversion and licensing conditions matter.
Again, this is something the council is equipped to establish.
Not something an ordinary tenant should have to unravel alone.
The council has updated its separate financial penalties arrangements. It has also been reviewing the wider enforcement policy, with the changes discussed by councillors at September’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
Officers reported additional enforcement responsibilities and plans to strengthen staffing, including recruitment of a Tenancy Enforcement Officer.
But the wider policy replacement hasn’t yet been approved.
A published policy isn’t necessarily a complete description of what officers do today. FHDC may have updated internal procedures.
But those changes haven’t been established from the published policy itself.
Tenants are entitled to know which procedures currently govern their complaints.
What FHDC needs to explain
The council’s waiting-list policy presents a problem that cannot be dismissed by saying landlords are expected to cooperate.
Tenants don’t approach the council simply because they want somebody to organise a repair. They approach it because they’re exercising their right to seek independent investigation and statutory protection.
Yet the system can leave them waiting while the landlord is made aware of the complaint and given an opportunity to address the problems.
The consequences are obvious.
A landlord may undertake genuine repairs, improving conditions for the tenant. That is welcome.
But those repairs may also remove visible evidence before an independent officer has established the nature, seriousness and extent of the original hazards.
If no effective evidence-preservation procedure exists, the council may struggle to establish whether Category 1 hazards were present, whether its enforcement duties arose and whether the statutory conditions for financial penalties were satisfied.
That is precisely why FHDC needs to explain how its waiting-list arrangements work in practice.
How many complaints are currently awaiting inspection? What’s the average waiting time, and how long has the oldest case been waiting?
How frequently are landlords notified of complaints before the initial council inspection? How much time generally passes between notification and inspection?
How many landlords undertake repairs during that interval? How many cases are subsequently closed without a formal HHSRS assessment?
And when a tenant has supplied photographs, reports or other evidence of serious hazards, what arrangements exist to preserve and assess that evidence before remedial work changes the property’s condition?
Perhaps most importantly, how many Category 1 hazards have been identified since 22 June 2026, and how many section 6A penalties have actually been considered or imposed?
The council should publish those figures.
It should also explain how complaints are triaged, how health risks and vulnerabilities are considered, and whether tenants are informed of decisions to downgrade, close or resolve cases informally.
Those questions are all the more pressing because the Ombudsman has already established that excessive delays in FHDC’s service caused injustice to a private tenant.
The law offers another route — but why should tenants need it?
A qualifying written complaint from a justice of the peace or the relevant parish or community council, indicating that a Category 1 or Category 2 hazard may exist, triggers a statutory duty on the proper officer to inspect.
A parish council doesn’t need to obtain permission from a magistrate before making that complaint.
Tenants may also have independent remedies under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 or, where conditions amount to a statutory nuisance, section 82 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
Those routes have their own requirements, costs and evidential difficulties.
But here’s the point.
People pay council tax to fund public services, including the discharge of statutory responsibilities. They shouldn’t routinely have to contemplate separate legal proceedings or seek intervention from a parish council simply to obtain an effective investigation into potentially dangerous housing.
The council is supposed to provide that protection.
A waiting list mustn’t become a landlord’s grace period
FHDC has been given stronger enforcement powers. Its own policies acknowledge that protecting health and safety is a primary responsibility.
Yet its published approach still allows tenants to be placed on waiting lists and encourages informal resolution while they wait.
There is nothing wrong with a landlord promptly repairing a dangerous home.
There is something profoundly troubling about an enforcement system that may allow the physical evidence of serious hazards to disappear before the public authority responsible for investigating them has even arrived.
That isn’t proof of deliberate favouritism or wrongdoing by individual officers.
It’s a serious question about the design, operation and accountability of the council’s service.
The Ombudsman has already found that FHDC kept one tenant waiting far too long (we know of many others). The council says it has made improvements. Its replacement enforcement policy is now scheduled for January 2027.
Tenants deserve evidence that those improvements are working — not merely another policy document promising they will.
Because the moment somebody exercises their legal right to complain should be the moment their concerns receive proper independent scrutiny.
Not the beginning of a waiting period during which the evidence can change, the landlord can repair, and the council may never establish what went wrong.
Dissent is not a crime. Neither is expecting a council to enforce the law.
The Shepway Vox Team
Delivering Delightfully Delicious Dissent Since 2015
