Out of Hours Repairs

Hillcrest provide a 24 hour emergency repairs telephone service to our tenants. From 1 April 2023 – 31 December 2023 there were 5564 calls answered by the call centre out of hours (around 550 calls per month).  At night and weekends, we have limited trades staff available to attend so it’s essential that they are only asked to attend to genuine emergency repairs.

Emergency repairs are “repairs that are needed to prevent serious damage to the building, are a danger to health, a risk to safety, or a risk of serious loss or damage to the occupier’s property.”

We aim to attend to emergency call outs to make safe within 4 hours. For non-emergency repairs you will be asked to wait until the next working day to report it and will be given advice on what to do until then.  Non-emergency repairs are attended to within 10 working days.

What happens when I report the repair?

When you report the repair the call handler will:

• Ask you a number of questions to help diagnose the problem and will decide if it meets the emergency criteria above.
• They will ask for about your household and any vulnerabilities.
• They will ask for a contact number to give to the trades attending.
• Depending on the repair, they may try and help you to fix it yourself.
• They will advise you that the repair may be recharged if it is found to be an issue caused by you. Such as lost keys or a kettle tripping your electrics.
• If the repair is not an emergency, they will explain this.

What happens when the trades attend?

• Please stay at the property until the trades attend and do not leave. This may take up to 4 hours.
• The trades staff are there to make safe the issue. If there are follow up works or parts required, this has to be booked in with the repairs team the next working day.

Below are some examples of common repairs and what is an emergency and non-emergency.