I live in a freehold block of flats which is run by a consortium of tenants or 'elected directors' - who collect the service charge and are responsible for communal areas.
I had to call out an electrician recently because, as it turned out the service fuse in the mains supply cupboard blew. None of the breakers in my flat tripped and the meter was not showing any signs of life so I immediately called the DNO (UK power networks) to investigate. I was told that I would need to get an electrician to assess what if the fault was with the mains supply, then they would send out someone. He came the next morning and promptly told them they need to send out an engineer. But they still refused to send someone because no one else had reported any problems.
So it fell to the electrician to try to solve the problem, I knocked on the door of one of the directors so we could get access to the service fuse box but was told that she did not have the key for the 'fire brigade padlock' which secures the external electricity meter housing, the key was with someone else who was away for a number of days.
She would not advocate breaking in even though it was an emergency so I had to wait until the other director came back to get the key and call out the electrician again, I was without electricity for two days.
When he came back the electricians opinion was our immersion heating element needs replacing as when tested it's causing a circuit breaker in our in-flat fuse box to trip intermittently. The mains cutout fuse supplying our flat in the outside external cupboard blew and has now been replaced, his opinion was that it failed because it's old and has degraded (the circuit breaker in the flat should have tripped before it failed).
I had to pay for two callouts due to inaccessible Mains external electricity meter housing in the building's external electricity cupboard. And was without power for two days.
I'm now in the middle of an argument with the directors who I've asked to foot part of the bill out of our 'service charge', partly because the fault was not in my flat. It was in the outside mains supply cupboard which they're responsible for and they are refusing to pay because they say a 'proper electrician' should have a fire safety key.
Is this true, is an electrician really required to carry fire brigade keys? I thought these problems where the responsibility of the DNO?
Any advice would be appreciated!
I had to call out an electrician recently because, as it turned out the service fuse in the mains supply cupboard blew. None of the breakers in my flat tripped and the meter was not showing any signs of life so I immediately called the DNO (UK power networks) to investigate. I was told that I would need to get an electrician to assess what if the fault was with the mains supply, then they would send out someone. He came the next morning and promptly told them they need to send out an engineer. But they still refused to send someone because no one else had reported any problems.
So it fell to the electrician to try to solve the problem, I knocked on the door of one of the directors so we could get access to the service fuse box but was told that she did not have the key for the 'fire brigade padlock' which secures the external electricity meter housing, the key was with someone else who was away for a number of days.
She would not advocate breaking in even though it was an emergency so I had to wait until the other director came back to get the key and call out the electrician again, I was without electricity for two days.
When he came back the electricians opinion was our immersion heating element needs replacing as when tested it's causing a circuit breaker in our in-flat fuse box to trip intermittently. The mains cutout fuse supplying our flat in the outside external cupboard blew and has now been replaced, his opinion was that it failed because it's old and has degraded (the circuit breaker in the flat should have tripped before it failed).
I had to pay for two callouts due to inaccessible Mains external electricity meter housing in the building's external electricity cupboard. And was without power for two days.
I'm now in the middle of an argument with the directors who I've asked to foot part of the bill out of our 'service charge', partly because the fault was not in my flat. It was in the outside mains supply cupboard which they're responsible for and they are refusing to pay because they say a 'proper electrician' should have a fire safety key.
Is this true, is an electrician really required to carry fire brigade keys? I thought these problems where the responsibility of the DNO?
Any advice would be appreciated!
