Information for Tenants
You may have been contacted by us, or put in touch with us by your landlord or their agent in relation to a repair or gas safety inspection. This guide has been put together to help you understand how we work and what it is we do.
Contacting us
If you need to contact us, you can use the contact form, send an email to [email protected] or phone us on 02080504729.
Contacted by us?
We may have sent you an email, text message or tried to phone you to book an appointment. Excluding our engineers, our office team will only ever contact you from the following numbers to make an initial booking:
- 0208 050 4729
- 07451 28 4729
- [email protected]
If you was not expecting to be contacted by us, you should reach out to your landlord or agent to verify any instructions that we may have been given. If you have been contacted from an alternative number or email address from someone stating that they are acting on our behalf, please let us know so we can validate the request.
We will never ask you for your address, personal details or payment information.
Your personal data
We require certain personal data before booking a visit, this helps us to ensure the safety of our engineers and also provide us with the ability to liase directly with yourself. The data provided will be done so by your landlord or their agent.
We will never sell, share, publish or use this data for any other purpose than the request made by the landlord or their agent. We will retain this information for 6 months after works completion, at which point it shall be removed from our systems automatically, although we may still be able to access this data through your landlord or their agents original request which is retained for a minimum term of 2 years and expires after 7 years.
Information about you that is passed to us may vary depending on the landlord or agent, but may include:
- Your address
- Your full name
- Your phone number(s)
- Your email address(es)
- Other persons you may reside with
Any information passed to us will be stored securely and processed in a confidential manner.
Security
All of our engineers carry identification cards, these are issued by the Gas Safe Register and can be validated by phoning us on 0208 050 4729 or by visiting the Gas Safe Register website and clicking the "check engineer" option.
Engineers that represent us will be in N4 Gas uniform. If you wish for us to offer a "password" please let us know at the time of booking. For your own safety, do not allow any person who you are not expecting to be in your home.
Our engineers are all employed by us, they will have been DBS checked and verified as suitable for working in people's homes.
Keys & access
We will always attempt to contact you prior to attending your property, however we may sometimes be instructed to attend in situations where this has not been possible.
Your landlord or agent may issue keys for us to access your property, they should give you at least 24hrs notice unless it is an emergency. Where we enter your home via keys, we will treat it the same as though you were there. Engineers that are authorised to use keys will be DBS checked prior to keys being issued. We will only enter spaces where we need to access and we will always knock on closed doors prior to entering. Please understand that our engineers do not live at your property, we do not know the layout and if we are trying to find something like a filling loop, valve or sometimes an entire boiler, we may need to look around. Anything within your property shall be treated with respect and anonymity by our engineers. We will always try to return controls to the same settings as found and will always attempt to set the locks in the same way as found; however some landlords or agents may require us to double lock even if secondary locks were not engaged on our arrival.
We will always check the door to ensure it has firmly been closed/locked on our exit.
What we do
This will depend on what has been asked of us by your landlord or their agent. It may be to look at an issue within your property or it may be to conduct an annual inspection of your gas installation. When we make contact with you, we will normally explain what it is and why we would like to attend. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us and we will do our best to explain as much as we can.
When we will visit
Our engineers are available 24hrs a day, but for routine and normal operations, we will attend Monday to Friday between 0800-1700. When we make an appointment with you, it will usually be a morning or an afternoon. We will do our best to honour this, but we are never able to guarantee our appointment times as our work varies greatly from day to day and hour by hour. Likewise, we may not always get to you by 5pm, engineers often do work late, especially in the winter as we are often assigned more jobs "in-day" which need to be attended, but cannot be planned in.
Landlord Gas Safety Checks
If we are attending for a "landlord gas safety check" this is a legal requirement for your landlord. The landlord or your agent may have instructed us to attend to complete this on their behalf as persons conducting the check must be appropriately trained and approved.
The checks do not take long, on average, 30-40 minutes should be expected, but we advise people to allow for an hour in case we encounter any issues. In most cases, we do not need you to be present.
We will require access to:
- The gas meter
- Every gas appliance within the property
We will need to briefly run your appliance(s) to conduct the inspection.
Unfortunately a gas safety check on it's own will not repair any issues you may have with your appliance(s) and you should notify your landlord or agent if you know that there is a problem before we attend as different engineers have different skillsets and we may need to send someone capable of dealing with the known issues.
Landlords are required, by law to have this check completed where a gas appliance is present within the property every year. Failure to permit access could be a breach of your tenancy agreement and could result in legal action being brought against you. If you are concerned about us attending, please contact your landlord or agent in the first instance, otherwise feel free to contact us with your concerns and we will do our best to answer them.
Carbon Monoxide Alarms
Since the 1st October '22 landlords are legally required to provide smoke and Carbon Monoxide alarms to defend against Carbon Monoxide poisoning within their properties where a gas appliance is present (Excluding cookers). These are not part of a Landlord Gas Safety Check, but we will inspect and check these units when identified.
If you do not have a Carbon Monoxide alarm or it's not working, please let your landlord or agent know. We will not neccssarily install or replace a unit unless your landlord or agent has agreed this in advance with us.
Footwear and face coverings
We are often asked to remove footwear and we do appreciate that this is your home, but our engineers are required to wear protective footwear whilst in your home as it is also their workplace. If this is of concern to you, please ask the engineer to cover their feet, all of our engineers carry boot covers as standard and they will not mind.
Since covid, face coverings have been a massive topic. We have always followed the government guidance and face coverings are no longer required by law. They make communication difficult and can reduce our ability to identify the unique smell that is added to gas. So by default, our engineers will not be wearing a face covering. However; we know that some people are still concerned around covid and we obviously do not want to make you uneasy - So if you would prefer the engineer to cover up, please let the us know when you call in so we can ensure the engineer has face coverings available. Although they are generally carried by most engineers, we cannot always guarantee stock on the vans.
...if you are ill
If you currently have covid, or any contageous illness, please let us know prior to us attending. Wear a face covering when we attend and keep a safe distance from our engineers. Our economy is fragile and we've had enough of lockdowns and social distancing, but at the same time, if you are ill, please try not to share it with our engineers as they visit lots of properties and we don't want to pass anything on to anyone else.
Appliances that we deem are unsafe
Our engineers are first and foremost gas engineers, under the Gas Safety (Installation & Use) Regulations our engineers are required by law to identify and make safe any appliance or installation that they deem is unsafe for continued operation.
In the event that one of our engineer requests disconnection of an appliance on the grounds of safety, please remember that they are doing this to keep you safe. Failure to allow disconnection could result in a forced supply disconnection by a utility company. In the event that you fail to allow us to undertake disconnection, we will invoice your landlord or their agent for our "waiting time" whist we instruct an alternate party to force a disconnection on our behalf.
We know this can be frustrating, however any verbal or physical abuse to our staff will not be tolerated. We strongly advise you allow the disconnection to take place and if you'd like to follow up, please contact us and ask for Dan or David to give you a call to discuss the matter.
Complaints
If you would like to make a complaint about one of engineers, staff or would like to speak with us, please contact us and we will arrange for Dan or David to give you a call and discuss the issues. We take pride in what we do and what we stand for and we want everyone to be happy with the service they receive, but we do know that mistakes do happen and we want to minimise our impact on all of our users.