If your co-operative has a maintenance agreement with CDS please remind your tenants that they can call in for emergency repairs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can also use this service if CDS runs a day-to-day maintenance service for your co-operative.  Please note: if your co-operative has its own repairs service, they should continue to report all repairs to the co-op’s maintenance officer.

 If emergency repairs are needed during office hours, they should call 03333 21 30 30 to be put through to our Customer Help Desk as usual. If they are required between 5.30pm and 9am, the phone number is 020 7397 5707. Calls will be automatically transferred to the company that provides the out-of-hours service. If it is a genuine emergency that cannot wait until office hours, the company will immediately contact one of our usual contractors, who will normally attend to the problem as quickly as possible. 

An emergency is, normally, one of the following:

• no electricity and this is because of a problem inside their home (not an external problem such as a power cut).
• no heating at all and they are elderly, have a physical disability or an illness that is affected by the cold, or have children under the age of 5.
• the home has been damaged by fire and needs immediate work to make it safe or secure.
• the home is being flooded and they cannot stop the water coming in (for instance, by turning off the stopcock).
• they have suffered a burglary or vandalism and this has left their home insecure (for instance, an outside door has been broken).

Our contractors will attend only if they are satisfied that there is a real emergency and that the problem is one they can fix. Otherwise tenants will be advised to speak to the Help Desk the following day. Do not call the out-of-hours service unless it is a genuine emergency. If our contractors attend a home and they find it is not a real emergency, tenants will have to pay the extra cost of working outside normal hours – including the call-out charge, which will be at least £60. If tenants make it clear what the problem is when they call, there should be no doubt – if it is a genuine emergency, they won’t have to pay.