I wonder whether someone might be able to advise me please? We have been renting for five months via an estate agent with no problems. Unfortunately, the day before we were due to go on holidays, the dishwasher caught fire overnight. The fire alarm (which the fire brigade told me was on an electrical circuit system) failed to work and if I hadn't been reading and saw the electric trip out and hadn't gone to investigate then we might not be here today! After sending our son to stay with grandparents then we spent most of the early hours cleaning up the soot that had gone through most of the house (the kitchen worktops and cupbboards either side were burnt out.) Anyway, we went on holidays being assured that they would do everything they could to clean and paint through by our return. It had been painted but due to dispute between landlord and insurance company then the kitchen was still in the same state and the cleaners had done a rubbish job. They were got back to clean again but he wouldn't do the front rooms unless the insurance agreed it. He went away after doing another rubbish job. This was on wednesday last week and by friday I had spent about 5 hours or so cleaning so I could carry on as normal. We do have a dishwasher which arrived wednesday but this will have to be removed when they start work on the kitchen.( I obviously can only use a couple of cupboards at the moment) They have told me they are now going to start to replace the worktops and doors on wednesday so all the electricity to the cooker will be off for a few days and there will be a dreadful mess!! This may take several days. Can anyone tell me what our position is for claiming a rent reduction for inconvenience and stress of all this? Obviously accidents can happen but we moved to this place because we wanted a dishwasher and nice big kitchen and we have been inconvenienced for some time now.. Landlord is a nice chap but all this was no fault of ours. Any advice appreciated. Sorry to ramble on..