Can I do my own Healthy Homes assessment?

Yes. Nothing in the law requires a paid assessment: compliance is about the property's actual state and the records that demonstrate it, and a capable landlord can establish most of both personally. Tenancy Services publishes the tools the professionals use anyway, including the heating assessment tool and detailed guidance per standard.

What a self-assessment looks like

• Heating: run the official tool for the main living room, compare the answer with the installed heater's rated capacity.
• Insulation: sight the ceiling space and subfloor where safely accessible, photograph with a tape measure, compare with the current minimums.
• Ventilation: open every habitable room's windows, run every fan, confirm outside venting.
• Moisture and drainage: walk the exterior in rain, check the subfloor barrier.
• Draught stopping: the cold-day walk with your hand out, plus the fireplace check.

Where a professional earns the fee

Two situations. First, access or judgment problems: you cannot safely get under the floor, or you need a written practicability opinion to support an exemption, that opinion is worth paying for. Second, confidence at scale: assessors set their own prices, so compare a few quotes, and for a landlord with several properties or a looming compliance statement, an independent set of eyes and a formal report can be cheap certainty. Either way the evidence ends up in the same place: filed against the property, ready for the statement that will eventually assert all of this in writing.