Boiler Care Plan Terms and Conditions

1. About us and this agreement

These terms apply to the Southwark Heating Boiler Care Plan (the “Plan”). “We”, “us” and “our” mean Southwark Heating, the trading name of Adam Bouchiba, a sole trader, trading from South Dock Marina, Rope Street, London SE16 7SZ. Gas Safe Register number 985690. Phone 020 8050 2022 or 07988 991963. Email info@southwarkheating.com.

“You” means the person named on the Plan, who must be 18 or over and the owner or occupier of the property, or have the owner’s permission for us to work on the boiler.

The Plan is a service and maintenance agreement. It is not an insurance policy. It does not pay for a replacement boiler and does not provide unlimited repairs.

Your agreement is made up of these terms, the Plan you choose (your Schedule of Cover) and your welcome confirmation. If there is a conflict, your Schedule of Cover takes priority.

2. Joining and when your Plan starts

You can join online, by phone or in person. When you join online you pay your first month upfront through Stripe, by card or Direct Debit. The agreement is made, and your Plan starts, on the date your first payment is taken (for Direct Debit, the date your first payment is collected). We will send you a welcome confirmation by email or text.

Our check of your boiler. We review every new Plan. Within 14 days of your Plan starting we may decline it by telling you in writing (email or text), for example if the boiler is unsafe, has a fault, is not a gas boiler or is beyond reasonable repair. If we decline your Plan, we will cancel it and refund every payment you have made in full, and you will not have to pay for anything under the Plan.

Free repair visits can be used from 30 days after the start date. Your included annual service can be booked from the start date.

If your boiler has a fault when you join, repairing that fault is a normal paid job and is not covered by free repair visits. Faults that existed before your start date are not covered by free repair visits.

3. What each Plan includes

Bronze (£9.99 a month): one annual boiler service each Plan year; 10% off repair labour and parts; priority booking over customers who are not members.

Silver (£12.99 a month): everything in Bronze, plus one free repair visit each Plan year (labour only, up to £90 in value); 15% off parts; the first available appointment within 24 hours.

Gold (£16.99 a month): everything in Silver, plus a second free repair visit each Plan year (two in total, labour only, up to £90 each); 20% off parts; the priority emergency add-on (normally £50) free on every call-out.

A “repair visit” means attendance by our engineer to diagnose and repair a fault on the covered boiler, up to the value of our standard first-hour labour charge (£90). Further labour is charged at our normal rates, less your Plan discount.

Parts are never included free. We will tell you the cost of any parts before work starts, with your Plan discount applied, and will only go ahead with your agreement.

Unused free repair visits do not carry over to the next Plan year and have no cash value.

Anything not listed in your Plan is not included. A CP12 gas safety certificate is not included unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.

4. Recall visits

If we need to return within 30 days of a free repair visit because the same fault has come back, that return visit is free and does not count against your free repair visits.

If the problem is a different fault, it counts as a new repair visit and uses one of your free visits if you have one left, or is charged at our normal rates less your Plan discount.

5. Appointments and priority

Appointments are arranged by phone, text, email or through your customer account. We work Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, excluding bank holidays. Weekend visits may be available by arrangement.

For Silver and Gold members, we will use reasonable efforts to offer the first available appointment within 24 hours of you reporting a fault during our working hours (a “priority slot”). The 24 hours runs only during our working hours, so a fault reported at 5pm on a Friday is counted from 8am on Monday.

If we cannot offer a priority slot within 24 hours, we will offer you the next available slot and refund any priority fee you have paid for that visit. This refund is our remedy for a missed priority slot, except as set out in section 8.4. It does not affect your statutory rights.

Southwark Heating currently operates with one Gas Safe registered engineer. A priority slot is not missed “through our fault” where the delay is caused by an event outside our reasonable control, including illness or injury of our engineer, severe weather, road closures or major traffic disruption, vehicle breakdown, attending a gas emergency or unsafe situation elsewhere, shortage of parts from suppliers, or the customer not being available. In those cases we will tell you as soon as we can and offer the next available slot.

Please give at least 24 hours’ notice to change an appointment. If you do not give notice and we cannot get access at the agreed time, we may charge £45. This is a genuine estimate of our cost of a wasted visit: travel to and from your property and the appointment slot we held for you and could not give to another customer (half of our standard first-hour charge of £90). We will not charge it if we rebook another job into the slot, or if you could not reasonably have kept the appointment, for example because of illness or an emergency.

6. Payments

Your Plan is paid monthly by Direct Debit (Bacs) or card, collected securely by Stripe. We never see or store your full bank or card details.

Direct Debit payments are not instant. The first collection can take several working days to clear, and your Plan benefits start only once your first payment has been successfully collected.

Your payments are protected by the Direct Debit Guarantee, which will be shown to you when you set up your instruction.

If a payment fails, we will contact you and try to collect it again. If a payment remains unpaid for 14 days, we may pause your Plan benefits until the arrears are paid. If arrears remain after 30 days, we may end the Plan by giving you written notice.

Ending the Plan early. If you end the Plan before the end of the 12-month term (other than under sections 8.1, 8.4 or 8.5), there is no early-termination fee. You only pay for the services you have actually received under the Plan, at our published prices: £90 for each annual service and £90 for each free repair visit used, plus the value of any Plan discounts you received. We deduct the monthly payments you have already made. If your payments already cover the services you received, you pay nothing more. This is payment for services provided, not a charge for leaving, and we will send you an itemised statement before collecting anything.

7. Your responsibilities

Give us accurate information about yourself, the property and the boiler, and tell us about changes.

Give our engineer safe access to the boiler, its controls and the gas meter, with a responsible adult present.

Report faults promptly, and turn off the boiler and call us if you think it is unsafe.

If you smell gas, leave the property and call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 first.

8. Ending the Plan

8.1 Cooling-off period: you have the right to cancel this agreement within 14 days of the day the agreement is made, without giving any reason. To cancel, tell us clearly by phone (020 8050 2022 or 07988 991963), email (info@southwarkheating.com), post, or using the model cancellation form in the customer pack. We will refund all payments within 14 days of your cancellation. We will only start any service or repair during the 14 days if you expressly ask us to; if you do and then cancel, we will deduct the normal price of the work carried out up to the time you told us you were cancelling. If a service has been fully completed at your request during the 14 days, you acknowledge that you lose the right to cancel for that completed service.

8.2 Minimum term: after the cooling-off period your Plan runs for a minimum of 12 months. You can cancel with effect from the end of that 12-month term by giving us at least 30 days’ notice.

8.3 After 12 months: your Plan continues month to month and you can cancel at any time with one month’s notice. We will remind you in writing at least 30 days before your 12-month term ends, explaining that the Plan will continue month to month unless you cancel, and how to cancel. We also tell you this before you join.

8.4 If we let you down: you may cancel the rest of your agreement immediately with no charge (other than for services already received under section 6) if, through our fault: (a) we fail to carry out your annual service within 13 months of your start date or your last service; or (b) we miss a priority slot on two or more occasions within any 12-month period. “Our fault” has the meaning in section 5 and does not include events outside our reasonable control. A single missed priority slot is dealt with by refunding the priority fee under section 5. Nothing in this section limits your statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

8.5 Ending by us: we may end the Plan by giving you 30 days’ written notice, or immediately if you are abusive or threatening, give false information, or prevent us from doing the work safely. If we end the Plan for a reason that is not your fault, we will refund any payments for the period after it ends.

9. Unsafe or unrepairable boilers

Our engineers must follow the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. If an appliance is unsafe, we will make it safe and may disconnect it, with your permission where required, and explain why.

If your boiler is beyond economic repair or parts are no longer available, we will tell you. Where we can no longer service or repair it, either of us may end the Plan and we will refund any payments for the period after it ends. We can quote for a replacement separately.

A service reduces the chance of breakdowns but cannot guarantee that a boiler will not fail.

10. What is not included

Faults that existed before your start date or before your free-visit waiting period ended.

Damage caused deliberately, by misuse, by accidents, by frost where the boiler has been left switched off, or by work carried out by someone other than us.

Parts, replacement boilers, cylinders, radiators, pipework, controls, flues, and any work outside the boiler itself, except at the discounts in your Plan.

Boilers that are not gas boilers, are commercial boilers or are not accessible without unusual equipment.

Sludge and water quality problems needing a power flush or system cleanse (we can quote for these at your member discount).

11. Our liability to you

We will carry out work with reasonable care and skill, as required by the Consumer Rights Act 2015. If we don’t, we will put it right at no extra cost.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law, and nothing affects your legal rights as a consumer.

We are not responsible for losses that were not foreseeable, or for business losses.

Business and landlord customers. If you take the Plan for a property you let, or otherwise in the course of a business, you are not a consumer and the following applies instead of the paragraph above: our total liability to you arising from the Plan in any Plan year is limited to the greater of the total Plan payments made in that year and £1,000, and we are not liable for loss of rent, loss of profit, or any indirect or consequential loss. This does not limit liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything that cannot be limited by law.

12. Changes to the Plan

We may change the price or these terms at your renewal after the minimum term, or earlier if the law requires it. We will give you at least 30 days’ written notice. If you don’t accept a change that is to your disadvantage, you can cancel before it takes effect without any charge.

13. Complaints

If you are unhappy, please contact us on 020 8050 2022 or 07988 991963 or info@southwarkheating.com. We will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and aim to resolve it within 14 days. We will tell you in writing what we will do.

If we cannot resolve your complaint, you may contact Citizens Advice (0808 223 1133) for free advice about your rights.

14. Your information

We use your details to run your Plan, arrange visits, take payments through Stripe and contact you about your Plan. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

15. General

You cannot transfer the Plan to someone else or another property without our agreement. If you move home, tell us and we will either move the Plan or end it fairly.

We may transfer our rights and obligations under this agreement to a limited company owned or controlled by Adam Bouchiba, or to a business that takes over Southwark Heating, provided your rights under this agreement are not reduced. We will tell you in writing before this happens, and if you are unhappy with the transfer you may cancel with no charge (other than for services already received under section 6).

If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest still applies.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction.

Back to the Boiler Care Plan.