A landlord or a managing agent needs three things from an electrical contractor: the certificates on time, the remedial work done once, and an engineer who turns up when the tenant reports a fault and treats the tenant properly. We provide those across portfolios of flats, HMOs, converted houses and mixed commercial and residential buildings in Birmingham and the West Midlands.
What a landlord usually needs from us
- Electrical Installation Condition Reports for the common parts and the individual lets, on a programme so that no certificate lapses, with the report in a form the local authority or the tenant can be given.
- Remedial work from a report, priced item by item against the codes on the report, done in one visit where the building allows.
- Fire detection in the common parts to BS 5839-6 and BS 5839-1 as the building requires, with the grade and category the fire risk assessment calls for, and interlinked Aico smoke, heat and CO alarms in HMOs and flats; we are an Aico Expert Installer.
- Emergency lighting on the staircases and corridors, tested annually and recorded.
- Door entry and access control: an entry panel that lets a tenant answer from a handset or a phone, fobs that can be cancelled when a tenant leaves, and a log of the street door.
- CCTV in lobbies, bin stores, car parks and entrances, with signage and a retention period the tenants have been told about.
- Landlord's supplies and metering: the common parts supply, sub-metering for a converted building, and the sorting out of who pays for what.
- Rewires and upgrades of older buildings, phased so that tenants are not decanted.
- Reactive faults: a tenant with no power, a tripping circuit, a door entry panel that has stopped working, answered promptly and reported back to the agent.
Working with tenants
Our engineers arrange access with the tenant directly where the agent prefers, arrive when they said they would, explain what they are doing, and leave the flat as they found it. The agent gets a short report after every visit: what was found, what was done, what is left. A tenant who has been treated well does not become a complaint.
Keeping the portfolio compliant
We keep a schedule for each building: the date of the last EICR and the next, the last fire alarm service, the last emergency lighting test, and anything outstanding. We write to the agent before a date falls due and we can report on the whole portfolio in one document, which is what a lender, an insurer or a purchaser's solicitor will ask for.
What we do not do
We work for landlords, agents and management companies, not for individual homeowners. If a tenant calls us directly about their own flat, we will ask them to go through the agent, and we will tell the agent they called.
Where we do this
Portfolios across Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Solihull and Coventry.