Reporting Repairs

Please let us know if your home needs a repair that you think the Society (your landlord) is responsible for.  The checklist below, gives some general guidance about who is responsible for what – but if you are not sure, please just ask us.  It is important to report any maintenance and repair needs promptly, to help prevent problems getting any worse or causing damage to your home or belongings.  Indoor decorating, cleaning, gardening and pest control are all your responsibility as a householder.  If you want to make any changes to your home or garden, whether as a DIY project or by paying someone to carry out works for you, you must ask for our written permission first – this helps ensure your safety, and gives the Society the opportunity to offer you advice and guidance. We distribute written guidance to all Society homes about Repairs Reporting, so please keep your copy safe and easy to refer to when you need it. There is also more information set out below.

Repairs and Covid-19: Please continue to report repair needs to the Society during Covid-19 including lockdown periods.  We will try to provide normal service if we can.   If Government restrictions are in place, contractor visits to your home may still be possible but our focus will be on prioritising urgent/safety repairs, and working in a Covid-secure way.  Please tell us if you have concerns about Covid-19.  Staff and contractors are not allowed to visit the Society’s homes if they are ill or have a positive Covid-19 test, and appropriate hygiene and PPE will be used.  You will be asked to confirm whether anyone in your household is ill or isolating, so that repairs and inspections can be planned in the right way, or postponed if appropriate.

Suspected gas or carbon monoxide leaks must always be reported immediately by contacting the public Gas Emergency Number 0800 111 999.

What to do if you need...

An emergency repair

The following numbers are for emergencies only. You may receive a bill to pay if you use call-out numbers for repairs that are not emergencies. Please ask yourself: CAN THIS WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT WORKING DAY?  The answer is usually Yes, it can wait.

Plumbing/General Building: Urgent major water leaks or failures only, ALSO
Total Electrical Power Failure: Please also check your consumer unit “fuse box”, or see whether there is a power cut affecting your neighbours too.
WESSEX RESPONSE/ELECTRICAL 01747 852878

Total heating or hot water failure (boilers and heating systems):
GASCARE 02380 516611 or 0330 999 3456
You should usually wait until the next working day to report problems with heating or hot water, unless you feel it is dangerous to wait.  If you have other forms of heating or hot water (eg: immersion), you can use these in the meantime.

True emergencies only occur when the matter is so serious that it needs to be attended to before the start of the next working day. An emergency is a danger to life or limb, a serious and immediate risk to health, or where there is likelihood of significant damage to the property (eg: a water leak causing a ceiling to collapse).

A routine or urgent repair

Please report routine and urgent (but not emergency) repairs to the Society in one of the following ways. The first two methods will receive our attention the quickest. If you use a yellow form or the office landline telephone, there will be a delay in receiving your request, particularly during Covid-19 lockdown periods.

  1. Emailing to repairs@wwmhs.org giving your name, address, contact phone and a brief description of the problem;
    OR
  2. Telephone/text the Property Manager (Pete Lillywhite) – 07884 248380 Leave a clear message if necessary, particularly if you are calling out of hours;
    OR
  3. Completing a yellow form and dropping it into the office or 6A letterbox;
    OR
  4. (Telephone the WWMHS office – 01962 841545). Leave a message if the office is unattended, and please remember that the office is not manned all the time, so using this option to report a repair will cause a delay.

Messages left out of hours will be picked up the next working day and prioritised as appropriate by staff at the Society (not on duty 24 hours a day).  Before leaving us a message, please listen carefully to our answerphone message, as these may include instructions and guidance which will help you.

Advice on repairs

If you are not sure whether you should report a repair need to the Society or not, please just ask us. We are always happy to discuss your concerns or questions. The best way to contact us for this is to use repairs@wwmhs.org for email, or by speaking with Pete Lillywhite on 07884 248380.

The Society arranges and pays for a number of different regular checks and reviews of your home, to make sure it stays safe and to help us plan for major projects like replacing windows or meeting the UK’s national targets for zero carbon. These checks include: annual gas safety checks and servicing, electrical checks and updates approximately every 5 years, asbestos monitoring and testing at some properties, and general condition surveys every few years. If you receive contact from somebody who wants to visit your home for an inspection and you are not sure whether it has been authorised by the Society, you are always very welcome to contact us to check.

Make a change to your home

It is very important that you ask for the Society’s written permission before you make any changes to your home or garden. This is one of the requirements of your tenancy agreement (your contract) that you signed when you moved in. The reason for this is so that we can help you ensure that all safety standards and legal requirements will be properly met. Sometimes you will also need local authority planning consent, or inspection by a Building Regulations inspector for the local authority, and we can advise you about that. Your proposed work might have an impact on gas, electricity or water services at your home, or may be in an area where there is known to be stable asbestos-containing materials which should not be disturbed. You must always discuss your plans with us before starting work, and we will confirm or decline permission in writing.

These requirements remain the same during Covid-19 lockdown periods, so if you are thinking of a lockdown project, please speak to us about it first.

Request a Repair

Who’s Responsible for Repairs?

Repair Details Us You
Baths & basins
Bathroom fixtures & fittings Toilet seats, bathroom cabinets, mirrors, shower curtains, unheated towel rails, toilet roll holders, plugs and chains
Blockages Baths, basins & toilets
Boilers Annual servicing and breakdown
Carpentry
Communial areas Including lighting, doors, door locks, door entry phones, bin stores, recycling areas, cleaning, lifts, communal heating and grounds maintenance
Decoration External
Decoration Internal
Doors Broken, worn, (other than wilful damage) hinge, latch, handle, frame and door.
Door furniture Including locks, handles letterboxes and door bells
Drains Outside, blocked or damaged
Electrical appliances Such as cookers, fridges, washing machines and dishwashers
Fences & gates
Fixtures & fittings Such as coat hooks, curtains and curtain rails
Floor boards Such as coat hooks, curtains and curtain rails
Floor covering Including adapting doors to accommodate carpets
Front door lock Including keys
Garden to individual home Including turf, repair or replacement of dustbins/wheelie bins and recycling refuse areas
Glazing If broken into you must get a police crime number
Heating Including solar, thermal or PV panels
Repair Details Us You
Hot water heaters Including immersion heaters
Infestations By ants, wasps, bees, cockroaches, mice, rats or bedbugs
Kitchen units Including worktops
Light fittings Light bulbs, fuses and flourescent tubes
Locks Including loss of keys and repairs to forced entry if you get locked out
Paths Including steps, footpaths and ramps
Pilot lights Including resetting any heating controls
Plastering
Plumbing repairs & leaks
Porches
Showers
Sink units
Stairs
Switches
Sockets
Telephone points
Toilet Seats
TV aerial points For houses only
Ventalation systems Including heat recovery systems
Wall tiling Bathroom and kitchen
Waste blockages Including rotary lines
Water leaks Including basins, baths and toilets
Windows Including cills, sash cords, catch and frames
This is just a general guide and does not replace your tenancy agreement. Please ask us if you are not who is responsible for the repair.

Leave Feedback

Recently had maintenance work completed on your property? We would love to hear from you one how it went. Let us know your thoughts on the work by filling out our contractor feedback form.

Let us know your thoughts on the work by completing the feedback section of the Tenant Order Summary you were given.

Submit a Repair Request

Do you have a maintenance issue you wish to submit? Use the repair request form to submit details of your issue so we can make sure the right person is sent to deal with the problem.

Send Request

Stage One

Approach the Society’s Chief Executive/Secretary. You can do this by ringing or texting 07884 248357, or by emailing, or in writing to The Chief Executive (CEO), Winchester Housing Society, 6a Ronald Bowker Court, Greenhill Road, SO22 5EA. We will ask you for full information about the matter and we may ask you to put it in writing (we can help you with that if you need assistance), or to meet with you. We will respond in writing within 10 working days, as well as explaining how our complaints process works. This is called Stage One of your complaint, and all Stage One matters will be added to the Society’s complaints log. Most matters can be dealt with fully at Stage One without moving to Stage Two. But if you are not satisfied at the end of Stage One, your complaint can be moved on to Stage Two.

Stage Two

We will make sure there is a written summary of your complaint that both you and the Society agree about factually (we will write this for you and ask you to review  – if you do not agree with the facts, you will be able to make this clear on the summary). The summary will be passed to the Society’s Chairman who will either deal with it him/herself or arrange for a Committee colleague(s) to do so; whoever carries out the task will be known as the Complaint Reviewer.  The Complaint Reviewer will offer to speak or meet confidentially with the person who raised the complaint, at a suitable place such as their home, the Society office, or at another convenient venue. The Complaint Reviewer will respond to you in writing within 20 working days, and the Society’s complaints log will be updated with any new findings and conclusions.

Remember we will probably need to ring/write back to you, and possibly meet, in order to look into your complaint properly and get the information we need. We cannot do that unless you give us your name and contact details. You can ask someone else to help you complain, but we will still need to have enough information to be able to investigate the facts and communicate with you.

The complaint log is always available for anyone on the Society’s Committee to examine, and summaries of everything in the Log are brought to each Committee Meeting to ensure that committee members are aware of the matters arising and how they have been addressed.