Council house repairs
Your responsibilities
- Keep your property clean and decorated
- Keep your garden tidy
- Take precautions to prevent damage once a repair fault has been identified and to report it to us promptly
- Repair damage you or visitors have caused
- Maintain appliances you have installed, for example, fire, shower, cooker
- Report any criminal damage or vandalism to the police (phone 101)
The repair book which is issued to all council tenants contains handy hints about carrying out repairs. If you are elderly or disabled and have no one who can help, we will give you advice on how you can get the repair done. We can do them for you but we will charge you at a commercial rate.
Jobs that you have to do
- Replacing keys when broken, lost or stolen, or when you are locked out
- Replacing doorbells (except in sheltered housing)
- Replacing door chains and house numbers
- Maintaining internal doors
- Adjusting and renewing hinges, catches, latches and handles on doors and cupboards
- Looking after any plastic windows or doors according to instructions given
- Putting up, removing or repairing shelves, rails or coat hooks
- Repairing minor damage, cracks or holes in the wall or ceiling plaster
- Resetting trip switches and replacing fuses, light bulbs, plugs and tubes and starters on fluorescent lights
- Testing smoke detectors and replacing batteries in battery-operated smoke detectors (not wired into an electrical circuit)
- Maintaining TV aerials (unless these are communal)
- Replacing bath, sink, basin plugs and chains
- Initial attempts to clear choked waste, toilets or gullies and full clearance if the choke is caused by a lack of care
- Fitting waste and supply valves to washing machines, driers and dishwashers (if not already provided)
- Replacing ash pans, fire tools and fire surround tiles
- Relighting pilot lights
- Getting chimneys swept regularly where solid fuel is used, at least twice a year
- Repairing coal bunkers where solid fuel is no longer used for central heating
- Replacing pulleys and lines to clothes posts
- Installing rotary driers unless in shared drying facilities
- Repairing fences between gardens
- Maintaining pigeon lofts, greenhouses, sheds, outbuildings or garages not originally provided by us
- Maintaining garden paths other than the main ones leading to your main doors
- Maintaining driveways (except where they are the only pedestrian access to your home)