Certificates in date, repairs reported to one place
- Gas safety
- Checked and certificated every year
- Electrics
- Inspected at least every five years
- Repair times
- Not published yet — see below
A property year has a shape to it. Three of these intervals are set by law and are the same for every landlord in England; the fourth is ours to set and is not set yet.
Who comes into the home
A repair means letting a stranger through a front door, which is a bigger thing than it sounds — so it gets a band of its own rather than a line in a list.
One route, and it is written down
A repair reported once, logged on arrival, with a reference you can quote back at us. A repairs system whose first question is “who did you tell?” is not a system. If you already live in a home we manage, the residents page is where that route sits.Who we will let through your door
Photography TBD
An engineer at a front door showing an identity card to the person answering it, in daylight, in an ordinary street. Ordinary clothes and a toolbag, not a uniform shoot. Nothing that identifies an address.
Gas work only by a Gas Safe registered engineer, electrical work only by someone qualified to certify it, identification carried and shown at the door, and an appointment rather than an arrival. Anyone working regularly in a supported home is vetted at the level their role is eligible for — see our safeguarding policy, which scopes that properly rather than promising a check the law would not permit. We have not appointed any contractors yet.Certificates, and a copy for the person living there
A gas safety record belongs to the resident as much as to the landlord, and so does the electrical report. Asking for either should not be a favour, and you should not have to explain why you want it.How many, and where
Photography TBD
A street of ordinary terraced houses in daylight, the sort of stock this actually is. No map, no pins, no aerial shot, and nothing that identifies an address.
TBD — the number of properties managed and the areas covered have not been supplied, and neither has any out-of-hours arrangement. Ask us and you will get a straight answer for your address rather than a map that flatters the coverage.
What property management actually is
It is two jobs that share a filing cabinet. The first is compliance: the checks the law puts on a landlord — gas, electrics, alarms, fire, the condition of the building — done on a cycle and evidenced with a certificate somebody can ask to see. The second is repairs: a route for reporting something, a decision about how urgent it is, a trade who turns up, and a record that it was fixed. It is not lettings and it is not agency. Nobody is being marketed to. Somebody is being kept warm and dry.
What is covered
Four things. The first three are legal duties with dates attached, so they can be described exactly. The fourth is the one that goes wrong most often.
- Gas and electrics
The two certificates with dates on them
Every gas appliance and flue checked for safety every twelve months by a Gas Safe registered engineer, with the record given to the resident. The fixed electrical installation inspected and tested at least every five years, with a copy of the report for whoever lives there.
- Alarms and fire
Smoke, carbon monoxide and a way out
A smoke alarm on every storey, a carbon monoxide alarm in every room with a fixed combustion appliance, both tested at the start of the agreement and repaired when a resident reports a fault. Where there are shared parts or the property is a house in multiple occupation, a fire risk assessment sits over all of it.
- Repairs
One route, and a decision about urgency
Something reported once, to one place, with a written record of when it arrived. Repairs are then categorised by how dangerous the fault is rather than how loudly it was reported — an emergency is not the same as an annoyance, and treating them the same fails both.
- Damp and mould
A building fault until proved otherwise
Damp and mould is a hazard, not a lifestyle. It gets inspected, the cause gets found, and the treatment is the cause rather than the stain on the wall. Blaming a resident for drying washing indoors is the oldest bad answer in housing and it is not one we will give.
What gets checked, and when
- Before anyone moves in
A condition survey, and the paperwork with it
The property is inspected before it is taken on: a valid gas safety record, a satisfactory electrical report, alarms fitted and working, an energy performance certificate, and any licence the local authority requires. A property that does not meet the standard is not taken on and then fixed later.
- Every twelve months
Gas safety
Every appliance and flue checked by a Gas Safe registered engineer, the record issued, and a copy given to the resident. A missed gas check is a criminal matter, not an administrative one.
- At least every five years
The electrical installation
An inspection and test of the fixed wiring, producing an electrical installation condition report. Anything coded as dangerous or needing improvement is put right, and the resident gets a copy of the report.
- In between
Visits, and what a visit is for
Someone looking at the fabric of the building rather than at the person living in it: damp, condensation, the state of the windows, the alarms, anything a resident has stopped bothering to report. TBD — Bluebell has not confirmed how often a routine visit happens, and a frequency invented here would be a commitment nobody has staffed.
What it costs
A resident pays nothing to report a repair. A landlord pays by agreement.
- A resident is never billed for reporting a repair, and never billed for a repair that is the landlord’s to do. Deliberate damage is the one exception, and it has to be evidenced rather than assumed.
- Statutory safety work — the gas check, the electrical report, the alarms — is not a budget line that can wait. It is a legal duty on the landlord and it happens whether or not the property is making money that month.
- For a landlord, management is either a percentage of the rent collected or it is built into a lease and there is no separate fee at all. Which applies depends on the agreement, and the two are not comparable on price alone.
- TBD — Bluebell has not confirmed its management terms, and no fee, percentage or schedule of recharges appears on this site until it has.
- Anyone quoting a management fee before seeing the property, its certificates and its condition is guessing. Including us.
Photography TBD
A kitchen table with a gas safety record and an electrical report on it, a mug beside them, someone reading rather than signing. Daylight, an ordinary home. Documents legible as documents but with no name, address or number readable.
Regulation and registration
Almost everything on this page is a legal duty rather than a service standard, which is why it can be described exactly. Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 puts the structure, the exterior and the installations for water, gas, electricity, sanitation, heating and hot water on the landlord, and it cannot be contracted out of. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 requires a home to be fit to live in at the start of the agreement and to stay fit, and lets the occupier enforce that directly in the county court. Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004 gives the council the housing health and safety rating system, under which it can inspect a home and require a hazard to be dealt with.
The safety checks have their own instruments. Regulation 36 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 requires a safety check of every appliance and flue every twelve months by a Gas Safe registered engineer, a record of it, a copy to an existing occupier within 28 days and to a new one before they move in. The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 require the fixed installation to be inspected and tested at least every five years, the report supplied within 28 days, and any remedial work the report calls for completed within 28 days or sooner if it says so. Those regulations reach occupiers under a licence as well as under a tenancy, and there is no supported housing exclusion from them. The smoke and carbon monoxide alarm regulations require a smoke alarm on every storey used as living accommodation and a carbon monoxide alarm in every such room containing a fixed combustion appliance — a gas cooker aside — tested at the start of an agreement and repaired once a fault is reported. Where a building has common parts, or is a house in multiple occupation, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires a fire risk assessment and a responsible person who owns it. What each of those checks involves, and why somebody has to come into your home to do it, is in the safety checks in your home.
Two regimes are often quoted at private providers and neither of them binds this one, so the page says so plainly rather than borrowing the language. Awaab’s Law — the Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025 — sets legal timescales for investigating and fixing hazards including damp and mould, and it applies to registered providers of social housing, for homes let under a tenancy. It is being brought in in phases and it does not apply to private providers. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 provides for extending it to the private rented sector, and no date has been set for that. Bluebell is not a registered provider and does not claim to be working to those timescales — a claim like that is only publishable once it is operationally true and can be evidenced. The same goes for HMO licensing: there is no general supported housing exemption from it, shared schemes are very likely licensable, and no licence and no exemption is claimed anywhere on this site.
TBD — the repair response times are not published anywhere on this site yet. The repair priority categories and the response time in hours against each — emergency, urgent and routine. Operations has to confirm them against a rota that exists, and they must be the same numbers as the repairs, damp and mould policy and the repairs contact route. Until then no hour figure appears anywhere on this site. Damp and mould is the clearest case for why that restraint matters. The organisations already inside the statutory timescales are measured against them, and a private provider that publishes a number it cannot hit has simply written the evidence against itself in advance.
Before you get in touch
The questions residents and landlords ask about repairs and management, answered as straight as we can while some of the detail is still open.
- How quickly will a repair be done?
Repairs are categorised by how dangerous the fault is. An emergency is something that puts someone at risk or makes the home unsafe to stay in — no heating in winter, an electrical fault, a leak that cannot be contained, a total loss of water. An urgent repair is something that makes the home hard to live in but is not dangerous. A routine repair is everything else, done by appointment.
TBD — the hours against each of those three are not published, here or anywhere else on this site. The repair priority categories and the response time in hours against each — emergency, urgent and routine. Operations has to confirm them against a rota that exists, and they must be the same numbers as the repairs, damp and mould policy and the repairs contact route. Until then no hour figure appears anywhere on this site. A timescale on a website is a commitment measured against us in an ombudsman investigation, so we would rather publish nothing now than publish a number we cannot yet staff.
- There is mould in my flat. Is that my fault?
- Start from the opposite assumption: mould is a building problem until an inspection shows otherwise. Report it, it gets looked at, and the cause gets treated rather than the stain painted over. If a resident is told to open a window and nothing else happens, that is a failure worth complaining about — our repairs, damp and mould policy sets out what should happen instead, and making a complaint is the route when it does not. How to complain about your landlord walks through the two stages and what happens if we do not answer.
- Who is responsible for what?
- Broadly: the landlord keeps the structure, the exterior and the installations working, and that is a duty section 11 does not allow to be signed away. The person living there looks after the inside as a reasonable occupier would, reports faults promptly, and lets the gas engineer in. Where a property is leased to us, who repairs what is written into the lease and it varies — which is why the lease is worth reading rather than assuming.
- Can I see the gas safety certificate?
- Yes, and you should not have to ask twice. A resident is entitled to the gas safety record, and to a copy of the electrical installation condition report. If a landlord or a managing agent treats either as confidential, that is itself the answer to your question.
Not sure which part of this you need?
Tell us the situation and we will point you at the right route, even if the answer is that it is not ours.
Commissioners and professionals
Local authority placements
Framework, spot purchase and block contract enquiries go to the commissioning team, not the resident inbox.
Partnerships and commissioning