Emergency Repair Service for London Property Managers
Backup emergency contractor for letting agents, block managers and portfolio landlords across London. 24/7 response, 90-minute SLA on tenant-escalated calls, monthly account billing and zero call-out fee on scheduled maintenance. Thirty seconds to add us to your roster — no commitment, no monthly minimum.
Landline: 0207 046 1363 · Accounts team: [email protected]
How we fit into your existing procurement
Property managers and letting agents already have a preferred-contractor list. Plumbers they trust, an electrician who knows the communal risers, a drainage firm for the blocks with old pitch-fibre runs. We are not here to replace any of that. The call we want on file is the one that goes out at 3am on a bank holiday when the regular contractor is not picking up, or the Saturday-night tenant-escalated leak that needs an engineer on site inside the freeholder's SLA. The rest of the time your existing roster runs exactly as it does today.
Opening an account takes about thirty seconds over the phone and another five minutes of paperwork afterwards. No monthly minimum, no commitment to a volume of jobs, no exclusivity clause. You give us the portfolio schedule, the PO format your accounts team uses, the name and email of the person who signs off invoices, and the access rules per property. We sit dormant in your system until you phone us. When you do, we respond with the same 24/7 coverage and published call-out charges we give every London customer — the difference being the monthly invoice rather than a card payment at the end of each visit.
The cold-call pitch, for anyone who has taken one from us: we are the backup contractor, not the replacement. Most of our account holders still use their regulars for 80% of work. We cover the other 20% — the out-of-hours calls, the bank holiday emergencies, the jobs where the usual plumber is on a three-week wait and a tenant's boiler has died. If that sounds useful to have on file, ring 07456 975436 and we will set up the account while you are on the line.
What a property manager actually gets
Eight things that differentiate a property-manager account from a walk-in emergency booking. Each of these is contractual once the account is opened, and each of them addresses a real friction we have heard from letting agents, block managers and portfolio landlords over the past decade.
24/7 emergency line, 60-minute London response
One number for the entire portfolio. A qualified engineer answers 365 days a year. Average on-site arrival inside the M25 is 58 minutes, with 93% of tenant-escalated calls met inside our 90-minute SLA.
Named account manager for multi-property portfolios
A single point of contact who knows your properties, your tenants' access quirks and your internal job-numbering format. You phone one person rather than re-explaining the portfolio on every call.
Monthly consolidated invoicing with your PO fields
Every visit is logged against a purchase order, job reference and property address you define. One invoice at month end rather than 40 loose receipts to reconcile.
Zero call-out fee on scheduled maintenance
Planned works — annual gas safety visits, EICR inspections, pre-void surveys, compliance checks — are booked at a fixed labour rate with no £60 or £99 call-out charge added on top.
Fixed quotes with job-pack PDFs for every visit
After every attendance you receive a PDF job pack: dated photos before and after, parts list with receipts, engineer name and Gas Safe registration number, and a fixed figure approved before work started.
Direct tenant contact option
We can liaise with the tenant directly for access, convenient time slots and post-works sign-off, keeping you out of the middle. Or we route everything through your office — your choice, per property.
Compliance calendar managed for you
We hold the renewal dates for CP12 Landlord Gas Safety, 5-yearly EICR, 6-monthly legionella temp checks, smoke and CO alarm tests and asbestos management surveys. You get a reminder 30 days before anything expires.
Portal or email reporting with auto-sent certificates
Completion certificates, gas safety records and EICR documents are emailed to a nominated address the same day. For portfolios over 20 units we provide a shared folder structured by property and job reference.
Scheduled maintenance with no call-out fee
The single biggest commercial difference between an account with us and an ad-hoc emergency booking is that pre-booked scheduled work carries no call-out charge. For a property manager running 30 or 300 properties that compounds fast — a £60 to £99 saving on every annual CP12, every EICR, every void drain-down, every pre-tenancy inspection. On a 50-property portfolio running annual gas safety plus 5-yearly EICR plus quarterly compliance visits, the zero-call-out policy is worth roughly £4,800 per year compared with a standard contractor rate card.
Every one of the services below is booked in advance against a job reference. The engineer turns up, does the work, issues the certificate or job pack, and the visit is added to the month-end invoice at the labour-only rate. The full list of PPM contract pricing tiers is published separately for portfolios that want a fixed monthly retainer instead of pay-as-you-go.
Scenarios property managers face — with real numbers
Four patterns that account holders phone us about regularly, drawn from jobs completed across London in the last 24 months. Every scenario lists the likely cost on a monthly account, the response time, the documentation produced and the commercial outcome for the managing party.
Scenario 1: weekend ceiling leak in a 24-unit block
A Saturday-night call from flat 14 in a managed block: water coming through a bedroom light fitting. You have a duty to attend within the freeholder's 2-hour SLA, and the building insurer wants photographic evidence before sign-off. We dispatch an engineer inside 60 minutes, isolate the feed to flat 18 above, capture date-stamped photos of the escape point, make safe the electrics with the tenant's permission and send a job pack by 10pm. Follow-up reinstatement is quoted against your buildings insurance PO, with the CP12 for flat 18 re-verified as part of the visit because access has been granted. Total out-of-hours cost on a monthly account: £240 including first-hour labour, isolation parts and the documented report.
Scenario 2: portfolio boiler failure in a January cold snap
Overnight temperatures hit minus five and seven boilers across a 40-property portfolio fail to fire the following morning. The account manager triages by tenant profile: two households with infants under two and one elderly tenant on a care plan are moved to the top of the queue within the first hour, with plug-in oil-filled heaters dropped off as interim measure. Over 36 hours all seven boilers are attended, five are repaired on the first visit, two require Remeha and Viessmann parts ordered under warranty. Every job is logged against the landlord PO, CP12 renewals recorded where the service was due within 90 days, and a portfolio-level summary sent to the freeholder by Monday morning. Total recharge to the landlord: £1,840 across seven visits on account billing.
Scenario 3: end-of-tenancy deep-clean reveals two faults
A new tenant checks in on Thursday. The inventory clerk rings on Monday flagging a partially blocked kitchen drain and a stopcock seized behind the washing machine. Four working days to resolve both, or the letting agent faces a check-in delay and a goodwill credit. We send a two-engineer visit on Tuesday morning: the drain is cleared with a high-pressure flexi-rod, a CCTV confirmation clip is captured, the stopcock is replaced with a quarter-turn isolator and a new service valve fitted to the washing machine feed. Job pack delivered same day, fixed price £310 plus VAT, invoiced under the letting agent's monthly account with the property reference and inventory report number in the subject line.
Scenario 4: block management communal cylinder failure
A 12-flat block loses hot water when the communal 500-litre unvented cylinder's immersion element and pressure-relief valve fail together. The residents' committee has formal standing under the lease, and any spend above the £250 per-leaseholder threshold triggers a Section 20 consultation under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. We issue a same-day emergency quote at £1,180 to restore hot water, completed under the 'reasonable emergency' exemption, followed by a longer-form specification for the full cylinder replacement at £6,400 that the managing agent serves to leaseholders through the 30-day notice process. The interim works pack includes the G3 certificate, a new PRV and element under a 12-month parts warranty, and a full service-charge-ready cost breakdown.
Monthly account billing — how it works
Most property management firms want one thing from a contractor's finance team: a clean monthly invoice that matches the PO numbers already in the accounts system. Our account-opening process is built around that single requirement. Four steps, usually completed inside a working week.
Credit check
A light-touch commercial credit check via Experian. Approved for accounts up to £5,000 monthly within 24 hours for established agents and managing companies.
Account opened
Signed T&Cs, nominated PO signatories and invoice email addresses set up. A named account manager is assigned as the single point of contact for the portfolio.
PO fields agreed
We match the job-reference, property-code and cost-centre structure your accounts team uses. Every visit is captured against those fields on arrival.
Single monthly invoice
Issued the first working day of the following month. Line-itemised by property, with merchant receipts attached for any parts over £50.
Payment terms: 30 days from invoice date as standard, 60 days available for portfolios above 75 units with a trading history. All invoices carry VAT at the prevailing rate. Separate cost centres per property are supported — useful for managing agents recharging leaseholders or splitting buildings and contents liability on insurance works. Payment by BACS, direct debit or company card.
Compliance management — the calendar we inherit
Every property manager inherits a statutory calendar: the annual CP12 Landlord Gas Safety Certificate, the 5-yearly EICR electrical inspection, the 3-monthly legionella water-temperature check on communal systems, the start-of-tenancy smoke and CO alarm test. Miss any of them and the exposure ranges from a void-insurance claim refusal to a fine under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 or a Section 21 ban under the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018.
For account holders we take the calendar off your desk. Renewal dates are held in our system, a reminder is issued 30 days before expiry with a proposed visit slot, and the certificate itself is emailed to a nominated compliance address the same day the work is signed off. Below is the summary of what we track as standard for residential rentals and managed blocks.
| Compliance item | Frequency | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| CP12 Landlord Gas Safety Certificate | Annual | Every gas appliance in the let property |
| EICR electrical installation condition report | 5-yearly | All fixed electrical installations |
| Smoke and CO alarm test | Annual + every tenancy start | One smoke per storey, CO in every room with fuel-burning appliance |
| Legionella water temperature check (LGSR) | 3-monthly on communal systems | Tanks, outlets, dead legs, shower heads |
| Asbestos management survey | Pre-works on pre-2000 properties | Managed common parts and void properties before refurbishment |
| Unvented cylinder (G3) service | Annual | Every unvented hot water cylinder |
| Portable Appliance Testing (PAT) | Annual on furnished lets | Landlord-supplied electrical appliances |
Standards referenced: Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector Regulations 2020, Smoke and CO Alarm (England) Regulations 2022, ACoP L8 (legionella), Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, RICS Service Charge Residential Management Code (3rd edition), ARLA Propertymark Conduct and Membership Rules.
Block management and freehold considerations
Block managers and freehold managing agents operate under a different commercial framework from single-let residential. Works above £250 per leaseholder trigger a formal consultation under Section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Communal plant — the roof-tank room, the riser cupboards on each floor, the basement boiler plant serving 12 flats — sits under the buildings insurance rather than the contents side. And the night porter or concierge often becomes the first point of contact for a leak at 2am, not the out-of-hours line. Any contractor working in that environment has to understand those mechanics.
We structure our block-management accounts to match. Emergency quotes under the "reasonable emergency" exemption are issued within 60 minutes of attendance so the managing agent can authorise immediate works without triggering the 30-day Section 20 notice period. Larger planned works — cylinder replacements, riser upgrades, communal heating refurbishments — come with the long-form specification pack that feeds straight into the consultation document the leaseholders receive. Night porters are given direct mobile access to the duty engineer for the first 30 minutes of a reported leak so containment starts before the engineer even arrives on site.
Service-charge budgeting is the other frequent request. For blocks under quarterly budget reviews we issue a YTD spend summary grouped by cost category (reactive repairs, PPM, emergency, statutory compliance) so the managing agent can present to the residents' committee without cutting and pasting 40 invoices into a spreadsheet. Lift-side flooding, roof-leaks on flat roofs over top-floor flats, and communal hot water cylinder failures are the three most common emergency call types we see in this segment, with communal drainage blockages a distant fourth.
For an equivalent page tailored to landlords rather than managed blocks, see our landlord emergency repair service page, which covers single-let and small-portfolio BTL in more detail.
Coverage across London
We cover every London borough from Zone 1 to Zone 6 and out to the M25 fringe. Response times are measured borough by borough and published to account holders quarterly. Zone 1-3 averages 58 minutes on emergency dispatch; Zone 4-6 averages 78 minutes. Key borough pages for property managers with concentrated portfolios are linked below. If your portfolio spans the whole capital, one account covers all of it — no postcode surcharges, no regional account separation.
M25 fringe coverage includes Watford, Barnet, Enfield, Romford, Bromley, Sutton and Kingston where the property sits inside the boundary. Properties beyond the M25 are quoted on a case-by-case basis via the accounts team.
Why property managers pick us over generic emergency plumbers
The honest comparison. We sit between two other options that a property manager will weigh up when the regular contractor has dropped a ball.
Generic emergency plumber
- • Fixed hourly rate, usually £80-£150 plus VAT
- • Card payment on the day, no account
- • No portfolio-level compliance tracking
- • No named contact, different engineer each visit
- • Job pack inconsistent or absent
Managed-service provider
- • High monthly minimums (often £2,500+)
- • 12 or 24-month lock-in contracts
- • Rigid SLAs with penalty clauses both ways
- • Aimed at 100+ property enterprise portfolios
- • Account manager covering 40+ clients
Emergency Repairs London
- • Monthly account billing with no minimum
- • No lock-in, cancel any month
- • Backup-contractor model, not replacement
- • Same 24/7 response as enterprise providers
- • Named account manager from the first visit
The model works because our account book is intentionally kept small. Each account manager looks after no more than 25 active accounts at any time. That is the difference between an email-ticket relationship and a phone relationship where the person at the other end knows the block you are calling about.
Property manager FAQ
The ten questions letting agents and block managers ask most often when they are opening an account. Ring 07456 975436 for anything not covered here.
Do you offer monthly account billing for property managers?
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Yes. After a short credit check we open a 30-day or 60-day account depending on volume and trading history. Every visit is logged against a PO and job reference you supply, and a single itemised invoice is issued on the first working day of the following month. Individual cost centres per property are supported, so the accounts team can allocate recharges back to landlords or service-charge pots without a manual re-split.
What's the minimum number of properties to open an account?
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There is no formal minimum. We have accounts running with single-property managers and portfolios over 300 units. Pricing tiers kick in at 20 properties and again at 75, with bespoke rates for portfolios above 150 units. The no-minimum policy is deliberate: we would rather a new letting agent open an account for their first six properties than be priced out and lose us as a backup when the regular contractor misses a Saturday.
Can you integrate with our property management software (Propertyvista, MRI, Qube, Re-Leased)?
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We integrate by CSV import and by email-to-ticket for most systems. Propertyvista and Re-Leased both accept our job-pack PDFs as document attachments against the work-order ticket. For Qube and MRI customers we provide a monthly reconciliation spreadsheet in the format the finance team imports. A full API integration is on our roadmap for 2026. If your portfolio uses a different platform, tell us and we will match the field structure you need.
Do you send completion certificates for every job?
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Yes. Every visit generates a job-pack PDF containing dated before-and-after photos, a parts list with merchant receipts, the engineer's name and Gas Safe or NICEIC registration number, and a fixed price agreed before work started. For statutory works, the relevant certificate — CP12, EICR, G3, LGSR logbook entry — is issued same day and emailed to a nominated address.
What's your SLA for tenant-escalated emergencies?
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For account holders the target is 90 minutes from call to on-site arrival for genuine emergencies — no water, active leak, full heating failure in cold weather, loss of hot water in communal systems, electrical faults posing a safety risk. Inside Zone 1–3 we hit 60 minutes on 78% of calls measured across the last 12 months. Non-urgent tenant issues are scheduled next working day as standard.
Can we white-label your service to our tenants?
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Partially. We attend in unbranded vans on request and our engineers introduce themselves as instructed — either as Emergency Repairs London or as the contractor booked by your agency. Written documentation issued directly to the tenant carries your letterhead when you supply a template, and we can route all tenant communications through your office rather than speaking to them at all if that is the preference on a particular property.
Do you cover commercial managed blocks as well as residential?
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Yes. A sizeable portion of our account work is in mixed-use buildings where the ground-floor commercial tenant sits under the same freeholder as the flats above. We are familiar with the split between landlord's fixtures, leaseholder demise and commercial tenant responsibility, and we structure invoices to reflect that split so the managing agent can recharge cleanly through the service-charge accounts.
How do you handle out-of-hours callouts on bank holidays?
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Bank holiday emergencies are covered under the same monthly account at a £120 first-hour rate rather than the £99 standard emergency rate — the only day with a premium on our published price list. The rest of the job is billed at the standard after-hours labour rate. Bank holiday response times are measured separately and average 75 minutes inside the M25 because the on-call rota runs a lighter crew with pre-dispatched vans.
Do you provide quarterly compliance review meetings?
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For accounts above 30 properties we schedule a 45-minute quarterly review with the account manager. Agenda covers upcoming CP12 and EICR renewals for the next 90 days, recurring fault trends across the portfolio (damp, pressure loss, tenant misuse), budget tracking against the YTD PPM spend, and any properties flagged for capital works. Smaller accounts receive an equivalent written summary by email each quarter.
What happens if a tenant refuses access?
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We log the refused-access visit against the property file with a timestamped note and a photograph of the front door. The visit is charged at the no-access rate (£45 plus VAT for a documented attempt, not the full call-out fee) and the job is returned to the agent for re-booking. For statutory gas safety and EICR obligations we repeat the process on dates you supply and keep the full evidence trail required to demonstrate reasonable attempts under the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018.
Related services and information
Emergency Plumber London
24/7 burst pipe, flood and no-water response across all boroughs.
Boiler Repair London
Gas-Safe engineers covering all major makes. Same-day repairs.
Leak Detection
Acoustic and thermal-imaging leak detection. Insurance-approved reports.
PPM Contracts London
Fixed monthly PPM retainer for portfolios wanting a flat-rate option.
For Landlords
Sister page for single-let and small-portfolio BTL landlords.
Pricing
Full call-out charges, hourly rates and emergency premiums, published.
CP12 Guide
Landlord gas safety certificate — timing, cost and compliance.
EICR Landlord Guide
5-yearly EICR electrical inspections for private rented sector.
Call-Out Fee Guide
How emergency plumber call-out charges work in London.
Ready to add us to your roster?
Ring 07456 975436. An engineer or account manager answers — not a call centre — and the account paperwork goes out by email while you are on the line. Thirty seconds to get us on file, no commitment, ready when your regular contractor drops the ball.
Landline: 0207 046 1363 · Email: [email protected] · Lines open 24/7, 365 days a year.