The three things section 11 actually names
Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 implies repairing covenants into most residential leases granted for a term of less than seven years. They are implied whether or not the tenancy agreement mentions them, and section 12 makes any covenant that tries to exclude or limit them void unless a county court has authorised it. A clause saying the tenant looks after the boiler generally does not survive contact with that.
Three separate obligations sit in section 11(1):
- (a) keep in repair "the structure and exterior of the dwelling-house (including drains, gutters and external pipes)".
- (b) keep in repair and proper working order "the installations in the dwelling-house for the supply of water, gas and electricity and for sanitation (including basins, sinks, baths and sanitary conveniences)" — but expressly not "other fixtures, fittings and appliances for making use of the supply".
- (c) keep in repair and proper working order "the installations in the dwelling-house for space heating and heating water".
Paragraph (c) is the hot water one. It reaches the boiler, the cylinder, the immersion heater, the heating circuit and the pipework feeding them. Where the let property is a flat, section 11(1A) extends this to installations that directly or indirectly serve the dwelling and are owned by or under the control of the landlord, which is how a communal riser or a shared plant room ends up inside the same duty.
The exclusion in (b) is worth reading twice. The supply is the landlord's; some of the things plugged into it are not. A washing machine, or a shower unit the tenant fitted themselves, is an appliance for making use of the supply, not the installation.
"Repair" and "proper working order" are not the same test
Paragraph (a) says keep in repair. Paragraphs (b) and (c) say keep in repair and in proper working order. That second limb does real work. An installation can be physically undamaged and still fail the test if it does not do its job — a cylinder that no longer heats, a boiler that locks out every morning, a thermostat that has drifted so far that the water never reaches temperature. Nothing is broken in the ordinary sense; the installation is not in proper working order.
The other side of it is section 11(3A): the standard of repair has regard to the age, character and prospective life of the property and to the locality. The duty is to keep what is there working, not to upgrade an old but serviceable system.
Notice is where most of the argument lives
For a defect inside the let property, the repairing duty generally bites once the landlord knows about it. That single point decides more disputes than the wording of any covenant. It is covered, with the 24 hours written notice section 11(6) requires for access, on our page on landlord water leak responsibility. What follows assumes notice has been given.
What a "reasonable time" tends to mean
Section 11 sets no timetable. For a private tenancy, reasonableness is judged on the facts: how severe the fault is, who is living in the property, the time of year, whether the tenant offered access, and whether parts had to be ordered.
There is, however, a published benchmark worth knowing about. The Right to Repair Scheme sets prescribed periods for qualifying repairs for secure tenants of local housing authorities. It does not bind a private landlord or a housing association tenancy. It is useful anyway, because it shows how these specific faults are ordinarily rated when somebody has had to put a number on them:
| Defect | Prescribed period (working days) |
|---|---|
| Total loss of water supply | 1 |
| Partial loss of water supply | 3 |
| Total or partial loss of space or water heating, 31 October to 1 May | 1 |
| Total or partial loss of space or water heating, 30 April to 1 November | 3 |
| Leaking from a water or heating pipe, tank or cistern | 1 |
| Leaking roof | 7 |
Two things fall out of that table. A complete loss of hot water in January is a next-working-day problem and the same loss in July is not — the season is part of the severity. And a leak from a pipe, tank or cistern sits in the one-day band however small it is, not because a weep is an emergency, but because a leak is the one fault that gets worse while everyone thinks about it.
The slow leak is where most real disputes sit. A stain that grows a centimetre a month, a boiler needing topping up every fortnight, damp under a floor with nothing visible. It is still a section 11 defect from the date the landlord was told. A reasonable response is usually "investigate promptly, then repair" rather than "attend tonight" — but the investigating has to actually happen, and a plumber who attends, finds nothing obvious and closes the job has not discharged anything.