Rental contract, maintenance etc.

BillieTheBot

Right, long story short. Our boiler has packed up. Again.

The people we rent with have a dedicated maintenance guy, ergo, we have a dedicated maintenance guy. Well, I say dedicated...

Boiler packed up this morning and thus we are cold and have no hot water. We called up the maintenance dude who said that he doesn't work Sundays. Great. And he added that the landlord / agency will NOT pick up the bill if we get someone else to come and fix it (someone who can work Sundays). So, theoretically, if a pipe burst on 5:01pm on a Friday afternoon, we'd have to sit underwater until Monday morning.

So basically, the maintenance guy can only come during normal working hours and we're not allowed (though I see nothing to the contrary in our tenancy agreement) to get in someone else to fix it.

Now my questions are as follows:

- If we do get someone else in to fix it as this is sort of urgent (I don't really like being smelly and cold), do we have legal recourse to claim the money spent on it from the landlord if he refueses to reimburse us?

- If the problem is as serious as I think it is (fuse keeps tripping when we try to turn the thing on, we've been through 3 fuses now) and we're left without hot water and central heating for a period of time, do we have legal recourse to claim a portion of our rent back from the landlord for the period which we were without heat / hot water as surely this renders the flat uninhabitable, or at least, renders it materially different to the condition under which we rented it.

Thanks chaps.

Former Member

If you have no heating (maybe hot water too) between 1st sept - 31st March they are legally obliged to come out and asses the situation within 24 hours of you reporting it. Unless the law has recently changed.

We had a similar prob a couple of years back and someone on here (cant remember who) found out that bit of info for me.

Former Member

You need to be talking with the organ grinder though, not the monkey. In other words, argue it out with the landlord armed with the relevant info. I expect one of the housing charities or CAB could advise, if Rubberskin's info is not enough.

Former Member

i certainly wouldnt go getting a plumber etc round without the landlords consent and expect to get the money back because it wont happen. Especially since they have a maintainance contract it seems.

you're gonna have to keep on them until someone comes round. shit but true.

over the past couple of years we've had terrible problems with landlords. in our last flat it took nearly 2 months to get a replacement oven for one which was nearly 15 years old.