Home maintenance and responsibilities

There are some types of repair that are your responsibility. These include:

• Decorating the inside of the property (including minor plaster repairs)
• Replacing broken glass
• Accessing the property, and arranging a new set, if you have lost your keys
• Replacing door catches and door handles inside the property (including cupboard handles)
• Replacing or repairing coat hooks
• Replacing loose or broken toilet seats
• Replacing sink and bath plugs and unblocking sinks, baths and toilets
• Replacing damaged or missing tiles to walls, cills, hearths or surrounds
• Repairing or replacing domestic appliances including gas/electric appliances that belong to you and the safe connection to services using appropriately qualified contractors
• Ensuring that any boiler range is supplied with water before firing and an adequate supply maintained
• Dealing with gas leaks on appliances that belong to you
• Resetting electrical trips
• Replacing fuses to appliances
• Replacing light bulbs
• Replacing smoke detector batteries
• Chimney sweeping
• Dealing with phones and phone connections, TV aerial points and any other equipment which need connection points in your home excluding communal areas
• Dealing with digital TV cables, internet connections and other technology connections points in your home excluding communal areas
• Replacing dividing fences between properties
• Maintenance of metal or Concrete washing line posts (except those in communal areas)
• Any criminal or malicious damage caused to the property by visitors or guests of the tenant or by persons known to the tenant
• Treating mould growth due to your failure to ventilate and heat
• Maintaining garden areas; including mowing the lawn and keeping hedges and trees cut to a maintainable level and not encroaching onto a public footpath or neighbouring property.

You are also responsible for:

Managing condensation levels inside your property by properly ventilating and heating it. You should not dry wet clothes and possessions inside the property on or by radiators or heaters.

Where fitted you must use extractor fans and the trickle vents in your windows. They must not be blocked or covered. You should let us know immediately if any extractor fan fitted at the property is not working.

You must keep all grates, grids, drains and gullies clean and clear except gutters that catch water from the roof, which are our responsibility.

You must not do anything to block toilets and sinks. This includes flushing nappies, sanitary products and wet wipes of any sort down the toilet or pouring fat or food down the sink or toilet.

You are responsible for all pest control issues related to your property.

You, or anyone in your household must not do anything which may reduce the effectiveness of the fire doors in your home or in communal areas. This means that you must not drill or cut into the fire door or fit cat flaps, door chains, peepholes or new letterboxes into fire doors or use anything to wedge or prop open any fire doors in your home or in the communal areas.

If you, or anyone in your household damages any items, you are responsible for repairing, renewing or replacing these items at your own cost even if they are normally our responsibility. If we have to carry out the work, we will charge you the cost of the work.

Costs incurred when a repair is requested but access not provided or the work rejected.
Any works which must be carried out by a Council contractor which the tenant agreed to undertake during the termination visit prior to the end of the tenancy.

If you are the victim of criminal damage to any part of your home, you must report the matter to the Police and get a crime reference number to give to us. If we are satisfied that it was someone else, we will carry out the repair at no charge to you. If we are not satisfied, we will charge you the cost of the repairs.

If you would like to make improvements and alterations to your home you must request permission from us. You can do this by contacting customer services on 01664 502502.

If you live in one of our properties and would like to install an electric vehicle charging point for your vehicle, you will need to ask permission from us first. You can do this through a permission request (see the "making improvement and alterations to your home section" above). 

If you are successful in gaining permission, we will provide you with information on the requirements needed to have a electrical charging point installed at your home. Please note that any alterations you choose to make, you will need to pay for yourself.

Before requesting permission to install an EV charging point, please read our guidance in the download panel at the bottom of this page. 

To help you keep your home in good condition, we will:

• keep the structure and outside of your home in good repair (windows and outside doors, roofs, drains, gutters and pipes).
• keep all the installations for supplying you with water, electricity, gas and sanitation facilities in good repair and working order. This does not include:
  • other fixtures and fittings or your own appliances that use water, gas or electricity.
  • any gas, electric or water meters that serve your home (these are the responsibility of the companies who supply the service to you).
• keep in good repair and working order any heating fittings (including for heating the water) that we have installed in your home.
• keep all shared areas and items that are our responsibility in a good state of repair (shared entrance doors, staircases and hallways).
• keep all shared services, such as lighting in corridors and door-entry systems, in good repair and working order.
• carry out repairs within timescales set by law or within a reasonable time of becoming aware of them.
• advise you of planned or cyclical maintenance taking place in your home or block, and discuss the project with you before any work is undertaken.
• make sure we remove our rubbish, building materials and equipment from your home within a reasonable time after carrying out repair work and will try to keep disruptions to a minimum.

Cyclical maintenance is work to maintain the general condition of the property and some communal fittings. It includes:

• External redecoration of your house or block of flats
• Internal decoration of communal areas, for example, stairwells and entrance halls
• General repairs to boundary lines and paths
• Checking, repairing and replacing guttering and downpipes.

Planned maintenance is designed to update and replace worn-out parts of your building. It includes:

• Major repairs to shared areas, for example, paths, steps, communal fences
• Major repairs to the fabric of the building, for example, repointing or works to renew the damp proof course.
• Replacement roofs
• Replacement windows (following surveys from a repairs and maintenance surveyor)
• Replacing boilers/central heating systems (following surveys by an approved inspector)
• Replacement kitchens (following surveys from a repairs and maintenance surveyor)
• Electrical rewiring
• Car parks and parking spaces

This type of work is planned so there is no defined timescale. We can carry out temporary repairs if appropriate.

We arrange a free annual gas safety check for all the gas pipe work, appliances and flues we own and have provided for you to use. These are carried out by Aaron Services on our behalf.

In addition to completing the gas safety check they will inspect all detection in the property including Carbon Monoxide alarms, smoke detectors and heat detectors. These are maintained as part of the annual gas safety checks and will be replaced if needed. Please contact us if any are missing or not working.

We do not check the gas appliances which you own, such as gas cookers. You are responsible for maintaining these and getting them checked every year by a registered Gas Safe Engineer.

Why do we need gas safety checks?

The safety check helps us to make sure that:

• everything is working properly
• you are not in danger from faulty appliances and potential carbon monoxide poisoning.

These checks are important because:

• around 40 people die in Britain from carbon monoxide poisoning each year
• carbon monoxide can build up in the air when your appliances are not burning gas properly. Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas that has no smell or taste. Breathing it in can make you unwell and can kill.

It is a legal requirement to have an annual gas appliance safety check done. Preventing or not having a gas safety check is a breach of the Gas Safety Regulations and means you are breaking the law.

If you do not let our contractors check your gas appliances, we will take action to gain access. Not granting access may result in losing your home. We must ensure every property is gas safe for us to comply with our legal duty as your landlord.

Who are Aaron Services?

Aaron Services are the contractors we use to carry out these important safety checks in your home.

All contractors are 'Gas Safe' registered and carry identity cards. Always ask to see identification. If you are unsure about someone who calls at your house to carry out a safety check, you can contact us on 01664 502502.

Aaron Services will contact you to let you know when they will be carrying out the check at your home. if your allocated appointment is not suitable, you can re-arrange the appointment with the contractor to suit you.

If you are not in when they visit, they will leave a card with their telephone number on it so you can contact them to make another appointment.