Reactive Maintenancein Worcester

What reactive cover actually has to get right

The first thing is the hand-off. A tenant reports a fault to an agent, the agent rings a contractor, the contractor rings the tenant, and somewhere in that chain a day goes missing. We take the tenant's number and arrange access directly, then tell you what was found and what it cost. That removes you from the middle of the arrangement while leaving you in control of the spend.

The second is a spend limit. Agreed up front, in writing: a figure below which we just fix it and invoice, and above which we ring you first. Without one, every job is either an unauthorised bill or a delayed repair, and both cost more than the limit would have. Making safe is always authorised regardless, because isolating something dangerous is not a decision to put in an email queue.

The third is records. Every visit leaves a note of what was found, what was done and what was tested, and certification for anything altered. For a let property that file is what answers a deposit dispute or a claim a year later. For a business it is part of the maintenance the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require of you. Somebody will eventually ask for it, and the sensible time to build it is before then.

The fourth is knowing what is actually reactive. A fault that recurs is not a series of callouts, it is one unsolved problem being billed repeatedly. If we are back at the same board for the third time, we will say so and price the fix rather than keep attending. Equally, a portfolio where every property throws the same fault is usually telling you something about the original installer, and that is worth hearing even though the straight version costs us callouts.

What cover includes

One number, an agreed limit, and a written record of every visit.

• Answered at any hour, seven days a week
• Access arranged directly with tenants or staff
• Agreed spend limit, with a call before anything above it
• Making safe always authorised, without waiting for approval
• Written record of findings, work and test results per visit
• Certification for anything altered, sent and kept on file
• Recurring faults flagged and priced properly rather than re-attended
• Portfolio inspections scheduled together to keep costs down

How cover runs

Set it up

Property list, spend limit, who authorises and who we can ring for access.

Report

Tenant, staff member or you rings the same number at any hour.

Attend

Access arranged directly, made safe first, repaired within the agreed limit.

Record

What was found, what was done, what was tested, with certification where it applies.

Maintenance across Worcester and Worcestershire

Managed portfolios across Worcester, Droitwich Spa, Malvern, Pershore, Evesham and Stratford-upon-Avon. Scheduled inspection of let property is landlord electrical safety and of commercial premises a commercial EICR; grouping those across a portfolio costs less than booking them one at a time. Out of hours, an urgent report is an emergency callout.

Set up reactive cover

Send the property list and tell us your authorisation limit. There is nothing to sign and no monthly fee.

Emergency lighting, and the test nobody does

Emergency lighting is the maintenance item that most often gets missed, because it works silently until the day it is needed. BS 5266 expects a short functional test every month, where each luminaire is switched to its battery and checked, and a full duration test once a year, where the fittings are run for their rated time, normally three hours, and then allowed to recharge. Both tests go in the log book, and the log book is what a fire officer or an insurer asks to see. Batteries in emergency fittings have a working life of a few years and they fail gradually, so a fitting that lights for twenty minutes instead of three hours will look perfectly healthy on a monthly flick test. That is the point of the annual duration test, and it is the one that gets skipped.