Help us keep your home safe

Gas  

As your landlord, we’ve got a legal responsibility to carry out an annual gas safety check at all of our rented homes. But this isn’t just a tick box exercise, it’s about keeping you, your family and your neighbours safe. If you have a gas supply to your home, we’ll arrange an annual Gas Safety Check with you. An operative will pop over to check any boilers, gas heaters, gas appliances and the pipework to make sure they’re safe to use. 

Electric 

We also have a legal responsibility to complete regular electrical safety checks on the electrical installations in all of our rented homes. This is to make sure you’re kept safe from electrical shocks and fires that could be caused by faults in the electrics.  

How do gas and electric appointments work? 

When the time comes for a gas or electrical safety check, we’ll send you an appointment time slot. It’s important you’re at home for the appointment, but if you can’t make it, please try to arrange for another family member or a friend (they need to be over 18 years old) to be at your home to give our friendly operative access.  

Gas safety checks take about an hour and electrical safety inspections take around three to four hours. Once we’re done with our gas safety checks, a Gas Safety Record (LGSR) will be sent to you either by email or post. And if any repairs are needed, we’ll make a follow up appointment with you, unless we can fix them then and there. 

What happens if I can’t make an appointment? 

If the appointment date or time doesn’t work for you, please give us a call as soon as you can to rebook a more convenient date. Let us know if you’ve got any working patterns or caring responsibilities, so we can try to work around these.  

Just to remind you – your Tenancy Agreement has a section that says you need to allow us access your property for inspections and repairs with 24 hours’ notice. If you don’t do this, you would be in breach of your Tenancy Agreement. We’re sure you don’t want that, and we certainly don’t either.  

These checks are really important to keep you and your home safe. So, if it gets to the point where we’ve tried to make three or more appointment, but you’ve either cancelled or we’ve not been able to get in because no one has been home, we’ll have to start legal action so we can gain access through the courts because these inspections are so important to keep you safe.  

If you own your home 

That means you’re responsible for arranging your own gas servicing. We ask that you send us a copy of your Gas Safety Record every year and it’s also a good idea to get an Electrical Inspection Condition Report carried out at least every ten years if you’re a homeowner. 

Asbestos 

Asbestos can be very dangerous if its disturbed, but if we know where it is and in which homes, we’ll be able to keep you safe. To do this, we’re working with a company called CASA to complete a survey of all properties built before 2000 that we don’t have enough data on – if this applies to your home, CASA will be in touch over the next few years. And for homes that we do have enough asbestos data on, we’ll be following industry best practice and carrying out a re-inspection at a maximum five year interval. CASA will be in touch with any customers this affects over the next two years.  

If you get a call and/or letter from CASA to arrange a survey appointment, please make sure you respond and give CASA access to your home.  

Property visits 

We want to make sure your home is a safe and comfortable place for you to live, so since December 2018, we’ve carried out property inspections in our rented homes. These take about an hour and are an opportunity for us to check if there’s anything obvious that needs repairing and see what the general condition of the property is like. It’s also a great chance for you to ask us any questions you might have and if you need help and support, we’ll be able to refer you to appropriate teams or external agencies. 

We’ll get in touch with you with a suggested date and time for your appointment. If you can’t make it, no problem. Just let us know as soon as you can (we’ll need at least 24 hours’ notice to rearrange) and we’ll sort it out. Finally, we love dogs, but please keep any furry friends in a separate room during the visit.