Damp and mould in London’s rented homes
Damp is far more common in London’s privately rented homes than anywhere else in the housing market. The government’s newest council-level estimates, published in June 2026, put a figure on it for every borough. Here are the London numbers, what a renter can ask a landlord to put right, and the part we see as cleaners: what mould means for your deposit when you move out.
Government data, 2024
All 33 boroughs
Free to quote
Checked October 2026
In the English Housing Survey, a home has damp when a surveyor finds penetrating damp, rising damp or serious condensation that is bad enough to be taken into account in a hazard assessment. Mould is usually what that damp looks like by the time you notice it.
Four findings
1 in 10
of London’s privately rented homes has a damp problem: 10.2%, or roughly 120,000 homes.
4 times
as likely as an owner-occupied home. 2.5% of London’s owner-occupied homes have damp.
Half
of London’s damp homes are privately rented, although private renting is under a third of the city’s homes.
12.6%
of outer London’s private rentals have damp, against 7.8% in inner London (our calculation).
One in ten London private rentals has damp
Across London, 10.2% of privately rented homes had a damp problem in 2024, against 8.9% of social rented homes and 2.5% of homes lived in by their owners. That puts private renters at about four times the owner-occupier rate. Private renting is just under a third of the city’s housing, yet it accounts for about half of the homes with damp, roughly 120,000 of them.
Modelled estimates for 2024. Private rented 10.2%, social rented 8.9%, owner occupied 2.5%, all London homes 6.4%. The England figure for private rented homes is 10.0%.
| Tenure | Homes with damp |
|---|---|
| Private rented | 10.2% |
| Social rented | 8.9% |
| Owner occupied | 2.5% |
Outer London renters are more exposed than inner London ones
Add the boroughs together and a pattern shows that no single borough figure can carry on its own. Across the 19 outer London boroughs, 12.6% of privately rented homes have damp. Across the 14 inner London boroughs it is 7.8%. The government’s report puts this two ways. Its key findings call boroughs in central London the most likely to have damp in rented homes, while its section on London says central boroughs had a lower proportion of rented homes with damp than boroughs further out. Our sum of the borough figures agrees with the second.
Our calculation: the sum of each borough’s modelled estimate of privately rented homes with damp, over the privately rented stock those estimates imply. Inner London is the ONS statistical definition (14 boroughs including the City); outer London is the other 19.
| Area | Private rented homes with damp |
|---|---|
| Outer London | 12.6% |
| All London | 10.2% |
| Inner London | 7.8% |
Find your borough
Type your borough to see its estimate. The table runs in alphabetical order on purpose: these are modelled figures, and the government’s own advice is not to rank one borough against another.
| Borough | Private rented with damp | Homes (estimate) | All homes with damp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barking and Dagenham | 8.5% | 1,670 | 5.0% |
| Barnet | 15.7% | 8,780 | 9.4% |
| Bexley | 18.3% | 2,910 | 8.4% |
| Brent | 8.0% | 4,030 | 5.4% |
| Bromley | 11.6% | 3,030 | 6.5% |
| Camden | 4.7% | 1,980 | 4.4% |
| City of London | 12.9% | 370 | 11.9% |
| Croydon | 14.0% | 6,290 | 7.0% |
| Ealing | 13.8% | 7,000 | 7.7% |
| Enfield | 9.3% | 3,680 | 6.7% |
| Greenwich | 7.0% | 2,310 | 5.5% |
| Hackney | 7.5% | 2,960 | 5.1% |
| Hammersmith and Fulham | 5.7% | 1,950 | 4.0% |
| Haringey | 8.9% | 4,010 | 5.0% |
| Harrow | 16.8% | 4,930 | 8.8% |
| Havering | 16.9% | 2,980 | 7.9% |
| Hillingdon | 20.8% | 6,560 | 10.2% |
| Hounslow | 14.8% | 5,270 | 8.8% |
| Islington | 5.0% | 1,730 | 3.5% |
| Kensington and Chelsea | 3.6% | 1,250 | 3.1% |
| Kingston upon Thames | 11.3% | 2,270 | 6.8% |
| Lambeth | 5.1% | 2,460 | 4.2% |
| Lewisham | 5.4% | 1,990 | 4.1% |
| Merton | 9.1% | 2,360 | 5.6% |
| Newham | 13.3% | 6,560 | 7.4% |
| Redbridge | 11.4% | 3,930 | 6.5% |
| Richmond upon Thames | 9.1% | 2,010 | 5.7% |
| Southwark | 7.9% | 3,280 | 5.7% |
| Sutton | 13.8% | 2,560 | 7.1% |
| Tower Hamlets | 8.9% | 4,660 | 7.2% |
| Waltham Forest | 10.0% | 3,190 | 4.9% |
| Wandsworth | 14.8% | 7,990 | 7.5% |
| Westminster | 5.5% | 2,670 | 4.4% |
| London | 10.2% | 119,630 | 6.4% |
These are modelled estimates, not a count of real homes, and the government advises against comparing individual boroughs with each other: the model cannot test whether a gap between two boroughs is real. Use your borough’s figure as a guide to how common damp is where you live, not as a ranking. Numbers are rounded to the nearest 10.
Damp, condensation and mould are not the same thing
Damp gets into a home in three ways, and each has a different cause and a different fix. Condensation is moisture from inside the home, from cooking, showers, drying clothes and breathing, that settles on the coldest surfaces: window frames, outside walls, the corners behind a wardrobe. Penetrating damp is water coming in from outside through a defect in a wall, roof, window or floor. Rising damp is moisture from the ground working its way up the walls. Mould is the black or green growth that follows any of the three once a surface stays wet.
Condensation is by far the most common of the three. The English Housing Survey recorded serious condensation in 3% of England’s homes in 2024, penetrating damp in 2% and rising damp in 1%. It matters for health as well as for the walls: the government’s health guidance says damp and mould mainly affect the airways and lungs, can also affect the eyes and skin, and in the most severe cases can cause serious illness and death.
Sources: UKHSA guidance on damp and mould, gov.uk; English Housing Survey 2024 to 2025, housing quality.
Who has to put it right?
Your landlord has to keep your home fit to live in for the whole tenancy, under the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, and serious damp and mould can make a home unfit. If you have reported it in writing and it is still not put right, you can take your landlord to court, which can order repairs and compensation. A landlord does not have to fix a problem the tenant caused, which is why the cause matters so much.
Your council can step in too. It inspects homes using the Housing Health and Safety Rating System, where damp and mould growth is a listed hazard. If it finds a Category 1 hazard, the most serious kind, it has to take action, and since 22 June 2026 it can also fine the landlord up to £7,000 where the landlord could reasonably have removed the hazard.
Your side is short and worth doing properly. Report damp and mould to your landlord in writing as soon as you see it, and keep a copy. Ventilate, use the extractor fans and keep vents clear. The government’s health guidance calls it “totally unreasonable” to blame damp and mould on “lifestyle choices”, so ordinary cooking, showering and drying clothes are not a reason for a landlord to ignore damp that comes from a leak, from rising damp or from poor heating and ventilation.
Sources: fitness for human habitation, guide for tenants, gov.uk; Housing Act 2004, section 6A; Shelter on damp and mould in rented homes.
Does Awaab’s Law cover private renters?
Not yet. Since 27 October 2025, Awaab’s Law has set legal deadlines for council and housing association landlords to deal with damp and mould: investigate within 10 working days, send the tenant a written summary within 3 working days of that, make the home safe within 5 working days, and deal with emergencies within 24 hours. The government is consulting until 18 December 2026 on writing similar duties into private tenancies. No start date has been set, and the consultation treats 2027 as the earliest possible.
There is a longer deadline as well. From 2035, privately rented homes will have to meet a new Decent Homes Standard, and one of its tests is that a home should be free of damp and mould.
Sources: consultation on extending Awaab’s Law to private tenancies, gov.uk; Awaab’s Law guidance for social landlords, gov.uk; the new Decent Homes Standard, gov.uk.
Mould at check-out: can it come out of your deposit?
Sometimes, and the evidence decides which way it goes. At check-out the landlord has to show that you caused the mould or made it worse, for example by not ventilating or by never reporting it. Mould that comes from a fault in the building is the landlord’s problem, not a cleaning deduction. The deposit schemes’ own case write-ups show how it plays out: in one mydeposits case a tenant who had kept emailing the landlord about mould got the whole deposit back, while in another, bedroom mould the tenant had never reported cost them part of it.
So the record you keep during the tenancy matters as much as the clean at the end. Keep every message in which you reported damp or mould, photograph it with the date when it first appears, and photograph it again at check-out. Cleaning can deal with light surface marks on sealant and grout. It cannot fix mould that comes from a leak or from rising damp, and that should not be charged to you as if it were a cleaning cost. If it is, the dispute letter generator sets out your side, and the check-out evidence pack lists the photographs worth taking.
Sources: TDS on mould during a tenancy; mydeposits case study; a second mydeposits case study; DPS on damp and mould.
Keeping condensation down through the winter
Condensation peaks when the heating is on and the windows are shut. A few habits keep most of it off the walls.
- Open a window or run the extractor fan while you cook and shower, and leave it running for a while afterwards.
- Keep air vents and the trickle vents in window frames open and clear.
- Put lids on pans, and dry washing outside where you can, or in a room with the door shut and a window open.
- Wipe the condensation off windows and sills in the morning, before it soaks into the frames.
Small patches of mould can be cleaned with a mould and mildew cleaner rather than bleach, wearing a mask, gloves and goggles, with the windows open; our guide to black mould on silicone sealant and window seals goes through it step by step. The government’s guidance says larger areas should be left to professionals. Never mix bleach with other cleaning products: with acids such as vinegar it gives off chlorine gas. And if condensation keeps coming back however careful you are, tell your landlord in writing, because it can point to a heating, ventilation or insulation problem that is theirs to solve.
Sources: UKHSA guidance on damp and mould, gov.uk; UKHSA on bleach, gov.uk.
Moving out this winter?
Condensation season and check-out season overlap. Our end of tenancy clean works to your check-in inventory, from £156, with a free re-clean if the agent flags anything within 48 hours. It cleans surfaces; it does not treat damp, and mould caused by a fault in the building is your landlord’s to fix.
About the data
Every figure on this page comes from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s local authority housing stock condition modelling for 2024, published on 25 June 2026 as part of the English Housing Survey. The estimates are modelled from surveyor inspections carried out between April 2023 and March 2025 and are produced for every council in England. We took the London rows of the damp tables (Annex Table 1.7 for all homes and 1.8 by tenure) and did two things with them: rounded the counts to the nearest 10, and added the boroughs together to compare inner and outer London.
A home counts as having damp when the surveyor records penetrating damp, rising damp or serious condensation that is bad enough to be taken into account in a hazard assessment. Mould is not counted on its own; it is usually the visible result of one of those three.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The borough table is free to reuse: download it as a CSV file (33 boroughs and London, with ONS codes). Please credit MHCLG as the source and link to this page.
Suggested citation
Monster Cleaning, “Damp and mould in London’s rented homes”, 2026, using MHCLG English Housing Survey local authority modelling 2024. https://monstercleaning.com/tools/damp-and-mould/
- Check-out evidence pack, the photographs worth taking room by room
- What a landlord can and cannot deduct for cleaning
- Deposit dispute letter generator
- The Move-Out Report, a decade of our own move-out data