Repairs & Maintenance

Safety in the Home

Gas Safety

We are required by law to inspect all its gas appliances and pipe work and issue its tenants with a Landlord’s Gas Safety Record. This will be done in a 10 month cycle. In addition, we will service any gas fires or central heating boilers in your house every year. It is essential that you allow the engineers access to do this work.

If you have any gas appliances of your own, e.g. a gas cooker, then you should have it repaired and serviced by an approved tradesman. You must check that any tradesman work for a company registered with 'Gas Safe Register' operated by Capita, a body which approves only properly qualified and trained gas installers.

If you want to install any gas appliance, you must first contact us for permission. It is dangerous (and can be illegal) if you let an unqualified person fit, repair or service a gas appliance. If you smell gas in your home, you should:

  • Put out all cigarettes and other naked lights
  • Switch off all gas appliances
  • Turn the gas off at the mains (the main tap is usually beside your gas meter)
  • Make sure you do not turn on any lights or other electrical switches (this could cause a spark)
  • Phone TRANSCO on the emergency number: 0800 111 999

Electrical Safety

Most of our houses now have circuit breakers and a Residual Current Detector (RCD) rather than a fuse box. These are more sensitive than fuses and will turn off the supply to the circuit when they detect a problem. An RCD will turn off the supply to all the circuits it protects, usually the sockets,water heating, shower and cooker, the overhead lights are not usually protected by an RCD.

Before reporting a loss of power, carry out the following checks:

  1. Is there a power cut in the area? If so contact your supplier to find out how long it will be before the power will be back on.
  2. If you have a power card meter, check there is credit on the meter.
  3. If there is not a power cut, then check your circuit breakers. Is one of the little switches at the off position? If yes can you push it to on? If yes then problem resolved. If no then you will need to turn off all the appliances connected to the circuit, reset the circuit breaker, then switch them on or plug them in one by one until your find the problem appliance. Double check that it isn’t a problem socket by plugging the appliance into another socket. If the appliance turns off the circuit breaker again then it is a faulty appliance.
  4. If all the circuit breakers are “on” check the RCD, if it has turned off then the problem lies in one of the circuits it protects. Turn off or unplug everything on the protected circuits and reset the RCD. Then switch on each appliance one by one until you find the problem. When turning on the cooker, check each ring, grill and oven separately, allowing them to fully heat up. If you can’t find the problem report it to the Association.

Fire Safety

Please read the Fire Safety Leaflet from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to find out more about how you can reduce the chance of a fire happening in your home and how to protect yourself.