Heating

This is often caused by air blocking the flow of hot water in the heating pipes to the radiators. You should report this to your local estate office as soon as possible.

If your heating is not working for more than 24 hours and you have reported it, your heating charges will be refunded for the period that you are without heat. If you are a tenant this will be refunded to your rent account. If you are a lessee this will be credited to your service charge account. This will contribute to the cost of temporary electric fan heaters that will be provided to you. Your local estate office may consider contributing to paying your electricity bill for the period the temporary electric heaters have to be installed.

If we experience cold weather in the summer months and if this weather is expected to be prolonged, we will consider turning the heating back on in consultation with the residents association or estate team. We use the summer period to carry out maintenance on communal heating systems and it can take some time to get the heating up and running. We are currently in the process of converting all our communal boilers to ‘Heating Management Systems’. This is a programme that enables us to remotely manage and control the communal boilers. This system works by fitting a temperature detector to the exterior of the building and this then feeds information of changing air temperatures to the control system which in turn varies the temperature of the heating accordingly. So, for example, on a warm autumn day the heating will turn off but on a cooler spring night the heating will turn on. We aim to convert all our communal boilers to this system.

Heating is provided for seven months of the year, however we spread the total cost of the heating over 12 months of the year so that the charge is more manageable for residents. Residents’ charges are based on the actual cost of running the heating system to which they are connected – it is not a standard Westminster-wide charge.

There is a replacement programme ongoing for all boilers that are more than 15 years old. You should contact your estate team and request that your boiler is inspected. If it is more than 15 years old and keeps breaking down then it is likely that we will replace it. All new boilers are A-rated condensing boilers which will help reduce energy consumption.

At present it is not possible to measure the amount of heating and hot water that individual properties are using and therefore we are not able to charge residents for what they use. We recognise however that many residents would prefer this. As communal heating systems are upgraded we are planning to install units within residents’ properties to measure the amount of heating and hot water that is used. This scheme will start in Church Street and we are going to roll this out across the city. This will be fairer for all our residents and hopefully it will result in a reduction in energy waste.