During Coronavirus, What Counts As An Emergency?

We know that during the Covid-19 crisis, it’s a confusing time for everyone and it’s hard to know what you can and can’t do.

Heating and plumbing repairs have been assigned ‘essential services‘ by the government and therefore are set to continue for the time being during the coronavirus lockdown.

As you can imagine, with engineers going into peoples’ homes, there is the potential for spreading infection and so our teams are working within government guidelines to ensure both you and our engineers always remain safe.

For this reason, we’ve made the decision that we’ll only attend emergency situations while social distancing measures are in place and have suspended all non-essential work and services.

What counts as a heating and/or plumbing emergency?

We’ll send an engineer out in the following circumstances as long as all health and safety guidelines are observed:

• Full boiler breakdown: resulting in a complete loss of heating and/or hot water

• Plumbing damage/failure: where internal flooding/water damage is likely

• Blocked drains: where external blockages (that are within the boundary of your home) are causing visible flooding

• Loss of toilet facilities: where you do not have access to at least one working toilet

What is classed as non-essential?

If you have ‘Premium’ home emergency cover, you will be insured for non-essential situations as well as emergencies. Unfortunately, at present we will not be able to attend the following:

• Servicing: while having your boiler serviced annually is important, it’s not deemed essential at this time

• Intermittent faults: where you have an intermittent fault, but it doesn’t result in a complete loss of heating or hot water

• Partial loss of heat: where individual radiators aren’t working but you have heat in other rooms

• Dripping taps: this, while we appreciate it’s annoying, is not deemed an emergency

Toilet issues where there is an alternative: if you have one toilet which is not working but access to others which are working, this would not be deemed an emergency

How-to guides

We’ve put together a collection of how-to guides to help you fix a variety of common household problems while you’re in lockdown.

However, if you’re not confident or you don’t have the right tools, please be patient and bear with us. Once social distancing rules are relaxed, we’ll aim to get our services back to normal as soon as possible.

If you believe your heating and/or plumbing issue is an emergency, please visit our dedicated FAQ page for contact information and guidelines.

We thank you for your patience in these difficult times and wish you and your family the best of health.

While social distancing guidelines are still in place, we are making every effort to keep both you and our engineers as safe as possible and to prevent the spread of coronavirus. This includes the use of PPE (personal protection equipment), frequent handwashing and you won’t be asked to sign anything.