Council housing repairs service

When you become our tenant you enter into a contract with us. As part of that contract, you agree to look after your home and we agree to carry out certain repairs.

In general, those repairs are to keep the structure and outside of your home in good repair and to maintain installations for water, electricity, gas and drainage inside your home. You agree to allow us to enter your home to:

• Inspect the state of the property
• Carry out pest control treatments
• Service your gas installation, or
• Carry out any of our duties under the tenancy agreement, including carrying out any repairs.

We expect you to report repairs as soon as they are needed. We will then aim to carry them out as quickly as reasonably possible within the timescales for carrying out repairs.  Find out what repairs you are responsible for.

We may also have to ask you to remove furniture, curtains or carpets from a room before the repair is started. Our staff will tell you about this when making the appointment for the work. If you do not do this, the work may be delayed.

Forced entry

There are certain situations where we will need to take action to protect your wellbeing. If we cannot carry these out under normal circumstances, we have the right to force entry to your home. We will only do this under exceptional circumstances, for example, if we need to

• Service your gas appliances and have not been able to contact you after two previous attempts
• Treat your home for pests and have not been able to contact you after two previous attempts, or
• Carry out routine inspections or repairs during major work and we have given you at least 24 hours' notice.

In these cases we are likely to charge you the cost of repairing any damage caused. The only other time we may need to force entry to your home is if there is a fault in your home (for example, a leak or other similar emergency) from which personal injury or damage to property could result.