Excess Cold Hazard: HHSRS Heating Duties for Landlords

Excess cold is a hazard under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), the risk-based tool councils in England use to judge whether a home is safe to live in. Under excess cold HHSRS assessments, a rented home with no fixed heating, broken heating or heating that cannot keep rooms warm can be rated a serious hazard, and a council must take action against the landlord if it finds a Category 1 hazard. The fix is usually practical: a working, controllable heating system in good, safe order, plus reasonable insulation.

This guide explains how the hazard is assessed under the updated 2026 government guidance, what councils can do, and the heating checks landlords should make when a tenant says the property is too cold.

What is the excess cold hazard under HHSRS?

HHSRS does not set a pass or fail standard. Instead, an assessor looks at a hazard and estimates how likely it is that someone from the most vulnerable age group for that hazard would come to harm needing medical treatment over the next 12 months, and how serious that harm could be. The result is a numerical score.

Excess cold covers the health risks of a home that is too cold, such as respiratory and cardiovascular problems. According to the government’s landlord and agent guide to HHSRS, published in June 2026 and updated in September 2026, the main example is the lack of a properly installed heating system in good, safe working order. The guide also links inadequate heating to damp and mould, which is a separate hazard in its own right.

Importantly, the assessment considers the most vulnerable group, not the person who actually lives there. A property let to a fit young couple is assessed as though someone more vulnerable could live there.

How councils score inadequate heating in a rental

The guide’s worked example shows how quickly heating problems escalate. A house without a fixed heating system was assessed with a likelihood of harm of 1 in 10, against a national average of 1 in 500, and scored 31,145. That is far above the Category 1 threshold.

The heating and insulation baseline indicators

The guide includes a checklist abbreviated from the HHSRS operating guidance. Its heating and insulation section sets out what assessors look for:

• Heating capability: able to heat the main living room to 21°C and other habitable rooms to 18°C when the outside temperature is -1°C, without rooms exceeding 25°C during the heating season.
• Controls: heating and hot water that the occupier can control and time.
• Safe combustion: combustion appliances safely vented, and carbon monoxide detection.
• Loft insulation: at least 250mm.
• Hot water cylinder: a 50mm jacket if not factory insulated, plus a cylinder thermostat.
• Cavity walls: insulated unless a professional confirms it is not technically feasible.

These are indicators, not legal minimums on their own, but a property that falls short on several of them is far more likely to score badly.

Council improvement notice for heating: what enforcement looks like

If an assessor finds a hazard, the council can choose from a range of actions. The 2026 guide sets out these main options:

• Hazard awareness notice: advisory only, with no right of appeal.
• Improvement notice: requires specific works. Work must start no sooner than 28 days after the notice is served, and the landlord has 21 days to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber).
• Prohibition order: restricts use of all or part of the property, normally taking effect 28 days after it is made.
• Emergency remedial action or emergency prohibition: for imminent risk of serious harm, such as a dangerous gas appliance in mid-winter.
• Works in default: the council can do the work itself and recover reasonable costs.

The penalties for ignoring a notice have increased. The guide says failing to comply with an improvement notice can lead to a civil penalty of up to £40,000 for offences on or after 1 May 2026, up from £30,000, and rent repayment orders of up to two years’ rent for offences from that date.

Landlord heating obligations beyond HHSRS

HHSRS sits alongside other duties that already affect heating in a rented home:

• Gas safety: an annual gas safety check on every gas appliance and flue you provide, with a copy of the record given to tenants. See our page on landlord gas safety certificates (CP12).
• Repairing obligations: under section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, landlords of most short leases must keep the installations for space heating and heating water in repair and proper working order.
• Energy efficiency: private rented homes rated EPC F or G cannot be let unless a valid exemption applies. Our guide to EPC C and landlord heating upgrades covers the proposed tightening of these rules.
• Awaab’s Law: already in force for social housing since October 2025, with the government committed to extending it to excess cold in a later phase and consulting on applying it to private renting.

A CP12 and a working boiler are not the same as a warm home. A boiler can be perfectly safe and still be undersized, poorly controlled, or feeding radiators that are too small for the rooms.

What to do when a tenant says the house is too cold

Treat the complaint as a repair request and move quickly, especially in January. A clear written trail protects both you and the tenant.

1. Acknowledge in writing the same day and arrange access. Ask which rooms are cold, when, and whether the heating is failing completely or just not keeping up.
2. Book a Gas Safe registered engineer to check the boiler is working correctly, the pressure is right, and controls, timer and thermostat are working and sensibly placed.
3. Check the radiators. Cold spots, sludge, failed TRVs or radiators too small for the room all reduce output.
4. Look at heat loss. Loft insulation depth, draughty windows and doors, and uninsulated cavity walls.
5. Provide temporary heat if the system cannot be fixed straight away. Use safe electric heaters, never portable gas or paraffin heaters in a rented home.
6. Record everything: dates, engineer reports, photos and what you told the tenant.

Common heating faults behind excess cold complaints

If the property is vacant over winter, low background heat also prevents frozen pipes and damp. Our guide to heating an empty rental property in winter explains what settings to use.

Preventing excess cold problems before they start

The cheapest time to deal with heating is before a tenant complains. Book the annual gas safety check and boiler service in autumn, ask the engineer to note any heating performance issues as well as safety, and keep a simple record for each property: boiler age, last service, radiator condition, loft insulation depth and EPC rating. For older terraced houses common across Stoke-on-Trent, solid walls and original sash windows make heat loss a bigger issue, so heating capacity and controls matter even more.

If tenants raise cold or damp, also check that they understand the controls. Our article on what tenants should do if the boiler breaks is useful to share with them. A short written guide to the thermostat and timer, left near the boiler, prevents many call-outs.

Get help with heating in your rental properties

Gasmaster works with landlords and letting agents across Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Crewe, Stafford and the surrounding area, from annual CP12 gas safety checks to boiler repairs, radiator upgrades and replacement boilers in tenanted homes. If a tenant has raised a cold or heating complaint, contact Gasmaster and we will arrange a Gas Safe registered engineer to assess the system and give you a written report.

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