Gaining access to your home

It’s essential that we can access your home to carry out important compliance and health and safety checks to keep you safe, so we need your help to make sure this happens.

Sometimes, we struggle to gain access to a small number of homes, which causes delays in us carrying out these important checks.

These checks, which are often electrical and gas safety related, must be done on time so we can give you the assurance you need about your health, safety and wellbeing in your home.

What are we doing to gain access?

Our Building Compliance team has been focusing on reducing the number of homes where we have been unable to gain access to do safety testing.

Work is also ongoing to improve resident communications through letters, texts and emails to encourage you to make an appointment to let us in.

Why can’t we get access to some homes?

There can be several reasons for residents not allowing us access to their homes.

It can simply be difficult to find a mutually convenient time for an appointment. In these cases, our teams are always happy to work less conventional hours, like at weekends, if this is more convenient for you.

Often, the reasons can be more complex, like illegal sub-letting or tenancy fraud.

The most concerning reasons are where the resident is vulnerable with mental and/or physical health conditions. Hoarding especially can be a root cause issue, where the resident needs support in allowing us into their home and the condition of the home can lead to delays in our ability to do vital checks.

In some circumstances, not gaining access to homes can also mean we can’t discover that a resident is seriously ill or worse, so we can’t help them get the support they need.

Other issues can be homes left in poor condition, antisocial behaviour, cuckooing (where somebody takes over the home of a vulnerable person), resident welfare or mental health issues and other safeguarding concerns. In these cases, we need access to check on the resident’s general wellbeing.

We’re improving this by:

providing at least 48 hours notice of checks (and usually more than this)
offering out of hours appointments to help residents with daytime commitments to let us in - Introducing ‘suited locks’ to shared spaces in buildings where we can – this means that we can use a master key to get in and carry out essential works without disturbing residents
creating a dedicated team to collaborate with residents in developing new ways to make it easier for you to let us into your homes when needed
as a very last resort, taking residents who repeatedly refuse to let us in to court

What can you do to help us?

You should have received a letter telling you that your gas safety inspection or electric safety checks are overdue.

To arrange an appointment, please call 0300 456 9996.

Rob Nower, Director of Building Compliance for Property Services, said:

“We have a number of homes, particularly with regards to electrical safety, that we haven’t been able to access to undertake critical tests. These are a mixture of people that haven’t let us in to their homes, so either the appointment was broken, or we are struggling to contact them to arrange to get in. We need to reduce this and do everything we can to arrange access with our residents to ensure they are completely safe.”