No heating or hot water: what to do as a landlord in England

When your tenant has no heating or hot water, three things come first: what they can safely check, a Gas Safe registered engineer, and keeping them told in writing. Keeping the installations for space heating and heating water in repair and proper working order is the landlord’s job. This guide gives no number of hours: the work is due within a reasonable time, which depends on the circumstances, and the court decides.

What your tenant can safely check

It’s safest for your tenant to try only the steps in the boiler’s user instructions, such as the timer, the thermostat, the pressure or a reset button. Anything that means taking a cover off is for the engineer.

The house guide is where you write those steps down before they’re needed. Its Boiler item asks for only the steps in the boiler’s user instructions, and Heating controls, Radiators and Hot water cover the rest. Under Who to call, and when, Standing instruction: no heating and Standing instruction: no hot water say in your own words what your tenant should do out of hours.

On your tenant’s page, What’s happened? has No Heating and No Hot Water buttons. Each shows those parts of your guide, then your standing instruction, then Report a Repair. An instruction that names a trade, a phone number or an amount is shown only when the app’s safety rules call the situation an emergency or urgent.

A smell of gas, or a carbon monoxide alarm sounding, is more than a heating repair: the app treats it as an emergency. See Gas smell, carbon monoxide or a power cut: what to do first.

Get a Gas Safe registered engineer booked

The app sends gas and boiler repairs only to a trade with a Gas Safe number. So it helps to add your gas engineer, with their Gas Safe registration number, before you need them. If your usual engineer can’t come, see finding a good trade when your usual one can’t come.

When you book, pass on the boiler’s make and model, any fault code on its display, and when it stopped. If a part has to be ordered, ask when it’s likely to arrive, so you can tell your tenant.

Keeping the household warm while you wait

Many landlords lend portable electric heaters while a part is on order. If you supply one, check it’s in good order first, and remind your tenant to keep it clear of curtains, bedding and furniture. Where your tenant pays for the electricity, some landlords offer to cover what a heater adds, and put the offer in writing.

With no hot water, an immersion heater may tide the household over, if the home has one. The house guide’s Hot water item is where you tell your tenant how it comes on.

Who is most at risk

A cold home is hardest on babies and small children, older people, and anyone who is ill or disabled. With more than one repair waiting, it helps to deal first with the home where someone like that lives.

Your tenant’s report asks whether anyone at home would be at particular risk, such as a baby, someone over 65, or someone disabled or unwell. It never asks who. The app sorts no heating as urgent when the home is cold, or from October to April. It’s an emergency when someone at particular risk is at home too. It sorts no hot water as urgent. The app sorts, and you decide what happens next.

An emergency is emailed to you at once. So is an urgent report, if you’ve chosen that in Repairs settings, as Set up out-of-hours cover and emergency emails explains.

Keep your tenant told, in writing

On the repair, Send Update sends your tenant an update from your own address, and it shows on their page too. When a part is on order, choose the message that says so, and give the date under Update them by.

It helps to send an update even when nothing has changed, and never to promise a time, a cost or a visit you haven’t agreed. When the engineer can come, Propose Visit Times offers your tenant up to three times, and they choose one on their page.

Keep a record of each step

While a tenancy is running, each step on the repair goes into its evidence file, dated, and an entry can’t be altered. A phone call or a visit that happened outside the app goes in with Record Conversation. After a visit, Record Visit notes who went, and Record No Access notes that nobody could get in.

The evidence file is your own record, not proof, and the court decides what it shows.

What the law says

In England, the landlord must keep in repair and proper working order the installations for water, gas, electricity, sanitation, space heating and heating water. That doesn’t cover work the tenant should do as a careful tenant, or things the tenant is entitled to remove. The home must also be fit for human habitation when the tenancy begins and throughout it.

For the tenant’s own home, the landlord isn’t liable for disrepair until they have notice of it. Whether a text, an email or a phone call counts as that notice hasn’t been checked for the app. The app records how you were told and draws no conclusion. After that, the work is due within a reasonable time, which depends on the circumstances, and the court decides.

Separately, a Gas Safe registered engineer must check each gas appliance and flue the landlord is responsible for. The checks are within 12 months of installation, then at intervals of no more than 12 months. A check up to 2 months before the deadline keeps the old deadline date for the next one. So if the engineer comes close to the time the yearly check is due, it may be worth asking them to do it on the same visit.

For a particular tenancy, and anything this guide leaves open, take advice from a solicitor or Citizens Advice.