Repairs (Shared ownership)

Repairs responsibilities for shared owners and leaseholders

The tables below show who is responsible for some common repairs that can occur in your flat or the communal areas.

Generally speaking, as a homeowner, you are responsible for most repairs that occur inside your flat. This is regardless of how much equity you own. This means that someone who owns 30% has the same repairing responsibilities as someone who owns 100%. This is because your rental payments only cover the remaining mortgage that ISHA takes out. Your rent does not contribute to repairs or our management costs.

We are responsible for repairs in the communal areas. We carry out these repairs and charge you for them through the service charge.

Your lease will set out the service charge you pay.

Reporting a repair

If you are a shared owner, you can report a repair by calling 0300 131 7300 or emailing HomeOwnership@isha.co.uk.

Please provide as much information as possible about the problem, along with your name, address and a contact phone number.

Contractors

If necessary, we may need to give your number to a contractor to make an appointment directly with you. Typically, a contractor arranges a visit for the morning or afternoon on a certain day. It is not usually possible to be more precise, as it is impossible to say how long other jobs will take.

Most of our contractors do not work at weekends.

If you do not keep an appointment made with one of our contractors, you could be charged for the call-out.

Emergencies

If the emergency occurs outside office hours, you can still ring 0300 131 7300 to speak to our out-of-hours team.

Emergency maintenance call-outs are expensive, and our contractors are strictly instructed to attend emergencies only. If you use this service for a repair which is not our responsibility, we will charge you the full cost.

Speed of repairs

We always try to carry out repairs that we are responsible for as quickly as possible.

As a guide, we set the following time limits:

• Emergency (Within four hours)
  We will attend within four hours for an emergency repair; however, please note that we will make the emergency item safe if it cannot be fixed immediately, and the full repair will be made under our routine timescales.
• Urgent, routine & planned repairs (Customer choice)
  For all other repairs you will be offered an appointment that is convenient for you.

Non-emergency repairs cannot be carried out until a surveyor has inspected the problem.

Section 20 notices

If the problem is substantial, we will need to get quotations from our contractors and possibly serve a Section 20 notice if the costs will likely be more than £250 per shared owner. A Section 20 notice begins a formal consultation process which could last up to three months. In certain circumstances, especially if the works are urgent, we may dispense with the notice period.