Home owners - what you can expect to look after

Although Tower Hamlets Homes will carry out repairs to maintain your block and estate, as a home owner, you must carry out repairs inside your home yourself.

Repairs you can expect to do yourself

Examples of repairs you must do yourself include:

• The internal plastered coverings and plasterwork of the walls and ceilings which form your home’s boundaries. This does not include any of the main timbers and joists of the building or any of the walls or partitions (whether internal or external).
• All window and door glass
• All doors and door frames
• Drains, pipes, wires and cables, conduits that are laid in any part of the building and serve your home exclusively
• Your TV aerial socket
• Your door entryphone handset
• Water, gas, and electrical apparatus
• Floors: surfaces of floors
• Boundary walls and fences of your garden.
• Fixtures and fittings: including any sanitary ware like cisterns and tanks, as well as sewers, drains, pipes, cables, wires (but not those lying above the ceiling or below the floor), ducts and refuse chutes which are situated in your home and serve only your home
• Radiator and radiator valves. Individual boiler systems in your home and your radiators and radiator valves.
• All health and safety related works in relation to gas or electricity.
• Stopcocks and surrounding pipework within the flat. (You must ask permission from Tower Hamlets Homes to turn water off to the block and pay for any resulting damage.)

You are also responsible for making sure gas safety checks and annual inspections are carried out for individual heating and hot water systems in your home.

Repairs you should expect to pay for

If you ask us to carry out a repair you are responsible for, we may carry out the work, but you can expect us to charge you for it (charges will include administration fees and VAT).

In most cases, like emergencies, we will only make safe. You will have to carry out any follow-up works yourself. You should, in these circumstances, call out your own contractors to do this. Where we do carry out any follow up works, we will re-charge you for it. We may carry out a repair you are responsible for, where:

• not making safe might put you or your neighbours in danger
• you are elderly or vulnerable
• making safe is part of a wider emergency for the block or a number of homes
• there has been a backsurge of dirty water or other hazardous waste which might affect your health or the health of a neighbour.

When we carry out a repair you are responsible for, you can expect us to:

• write to you with an estimate for the cost of the repair before we raise an order and carry out any work (for emergencies we will tell you the cost over the phone and confirm in writing as soon as possible)
• ask you if you want to go ahead with the repair and if you agree arrange an appointment for the work to be carried out.
• send you an invoice setting out the cost of the work- this has a payment slip that you can use to pay for the repair at any bank or post office.

Further information 

If you want more information about homeowner repairs, or want to ask us a question, please use our online enquiry form, or call us on 020 7364 5015.

More information is available in our Leaseholders’ Guide.