Completing a survey of your home
What's a home survey for?
From time to time, we’ll need to access your home to carry out an inspection, check or survey. These visits are often legal requirements, making sure your home is safe to live in.
There are a few different surveys that we carry out, including:
- Home condition
- Essential gas and electrical safety checks
- Energy audits and planned uprades and rewiring
- Repairs, including damp and mould
- Asbestos
- Aids and adaptations
- Tree surveys
Home condition survey
Sometimes known as a ‘stock’ or property condition survey, these hour-long visits are done to check on the age and condition of the major elements in your home. The surveyor will look at your kitchen and bathroom primarily, but also some of the fixtures and fittings elsewhere like your wiring, boiler and fuse box.
And rest assured, they’re only looking at the home you live in – not how you furnish it or anything to do with your lifestyle. They won’t talk to you about your rent or any tenancy issues, and neither of those things will impact the outcome of the survey.
It’s all about planning in any upgrades or replacements in the near future to keep your home warm, efficient and comfortable.
Electrical safety check
These happen every five years and, much like the gas safety check, the purpose is to make sure your home is running safely and efficiently.
These appointments can take up to three hours, but that’s not common. The engineer will temporarily turn off the power so they can carry out the survey safely, and will then check things like:
- plug sockets
- consumer units or fuse boxes
- wiring inside the walls, under floors and above the ceilings
- lighting, switches and sockets
- fixed electrical equipment, like showers
They’re looking for wear and tear, signs of age and damage, and making sure you’re not at risk from fires, faults or electric shocks in your home.
Once the check is complete, an Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR) will be generated and sent to you for safe keeping.
Gas safety check
These happen every year and are absolutely essential. During these visits, the engineer will temporarily turn off your heating and hot water to make sure they can carry out their survey safely.
Before the appointment, you’ll need to:
- Switch off your boiler
- Make sure there’s credit on your meter, if applicable
- Keep the area around the boiler clear and accessible for the engineer
The checks take no longer than an hour and provide peace of mind that your gas heating and hot water systems are running safely and efficiently. If the engineer finds any issues, they’ll discuss these with you and advise you of the next steps, which could be a repair or an upgrade to a more modern system.
These checks are a legal requirement for us as a landlord, and a fundamental part of your responsibility as a customer to allow us access to your home to carry them out.
Can't make your gas safety appointment?
Your responsibilities
It's outlined in your tenancy agreement that we'll need access to your home sometimes. Some of the surveys, like the three mentioned above, are critical for your safety - this is our priority.
Sometimes, we work with trusted local contractors to carry out these surveys on our behalf. In these cases, you may hear from them directly rather than us when it comes to booking an appointment. Please don't ignore them. If you have any doubts or want to double-check a call or visit is legitimate, you can always call us and we'll make sure everthing's in order. And, on the day of the appointment, they'll always show you their ID so you can rest assured knowing you're in safe hands.
Tell us if you need extra support
Some customers find it overwhelming or uncomfortable having someone they don't know in their home, and that's understandable. However, it's not a reason to ignore appointment letters or be unavailable on the day.
If you need extra support, like a chaperone, translated communications or for the appointment to happen on a certain day or time, we can work with that. All we want is to make sure your home is safe, efficient and affordable, and we'll help in any way we can to make sure you feel confident and comfortable in letting us do that.