InformationHousing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS)
Housing Standards in the private rented sector
All residential premises should provide a safe and healthy environment for any occupier or visitor.
The Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) is a tool that is used by The Private Sector Housing team to identify and assess risks to the health and wellbeing of people in their own home, whether privately rented or owned.
The HHSRS is used to assess health and safety hazards in homes. It is risk-based, set out in regulation and covers a range of 21 potential hazards.
An HHSRS assessment evaluates the potential risk of harm to an occupier and rates the seriousness of any hazard identified. It’s used by Councils when they enforce standards in private rented properties.
Tenants
This guide was developed specifically for tenants and provides a simple overview of the HHSRS. It explains its purpose, the requirements placed on your landlord, the way your property is checked and what happens after the property check is set out in law in the Housing Act 2004. This is one of a range of legal requirements placed on landlords associated with housing conditions.
Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS): Tenant guide
Landlords and property-related professionals
This is guidance is aimed at landlords and property-related professionals. It provides a summary of the HHSRS, how it works and how the system is enforced by the Council.
Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS): Landlord and agent guide
Update - general HHSRS guidance
This guidance is the new statutory operating and enforcement guidance. It has an updated assessment and scoring process, new descriptive terms and a new suite of illustrated case studies and new baseline indicators for achieving safety against each hazard. Hazards that are statistically similar in terms of their likelihood and harm have been combined reducing the number of hazards from 29 to 21.
Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS): Operating guidance
Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS): Enforcement guidance
Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS): Case studies
Local authority enforcement powers under the Housing Act 2004