Emergency call-out · Greater Manchester
Something has gone wrong. Start here.
The situations that actually generate emergency call-outs, what to do in the first minute, and who has to be called before anyone else. Around three quarters of property emergencies happen outside working hours, so this page is written to be useful at two in the morning.
If life or safety is at risk, call 999 first. That means fire, anyone trapped or injured, or a suspected gas escape where somebody is unwell. Nothing on this page comes before that call. We are a maintenance agent and an introducer, not an emergency service.
National Gas Emergency Service. Free, around the clock. Call from outside the property.
Electricity North West, the network operator for Greater Manchester. Free, around the clock.
United Utilities, 24 hours. Use this where the fault is on the mains rather than inside the property.
Manchester City Council housing repairs, 24 hours. For council tenants only, not private lets.
Symptom first
What counts as an emergency
Tap the situation that matches. Each one gives you the first action to take, the isolation point to find, who picks it up and how quickly. The definitions follow the emergency repair categories Manchester City Council publish for their own housing stock, which is the clearest local benchmark there is.
Signs it is this.
- The smell of gas, indoors or at the meter
- Hissing from a meter, a pipe or an appliance
- A carbon monoxide alarm sounding
- Sooty marks or yellow staining around a boiler, fire or flue
- Headaches, nausea or drowsiness that ease once you leave the property
Do this first. Do not operate any electrical switch and do not use a phone indoors. Open the doors and windows, turn the gas off at the meter control handle if you can reach it safely, get everyone out, and call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 from outside. That line is free and answers around the clock. Call 999 if anyone is unwell.
Only a Gas Safe registered engineer may work on gas. If an appliance has been capped and labelled At Risk or Immediately Dangerous it must stay off until it has been repaired and retested - reconnecting it yourself is an offence as well as a danger.
Signs it is this.
- No power anywhere in the property
- One circuit dead and a breaker or RCD that will not stay in
- A burning smell, scorch marks or smoke from a socket, switch or fitting
- Bare or exposed wiring, a cracked socket or a broken switch
- No lighting at all in a communal stair, corridor or car park
Do this first. First check whether the neighbours are off too. If the street is out it is a network fault rather than the property - call 105 free, at any hour, and Electricity North West will pick it up. If it is only this property, open the consumer unit and look for a tripped breaker or RCD. Reset it once. If it trips again, leave it off and stop there.
Never keep resetting a breaker that keeps tripping, and never touch anything that smells of burning or looks scorched. Bare wires, a cracked socket and a smoking fitting are each an emergency in their own right, and so is a failed communal light.
Signs it is this.
- A burst or running water that cannot be stopped
- Water tracking through a ceiling or down a wall
- A leak reaching light fittings, sockets or the consumer unit
- No cold water from any tap
- A storage tank or an overflow running constantly
Do this first. Turn the water off at the internal stopcock - usually under the kitchen sink, in a downstairs cloakroom or in the airing cupboard. If water is anywhere near electrics, switch the consumer unit off at the main switch first and do not touch anything wet. Then move belongings and floor coverings clear and catch what you can.
If there is no cold water anywhere, or water is rising in the street, the fault may be on the mains rather than inside the property. United Utilities run a 24 hour line on 0345 672 3723.
Signs it is this.
- Slates or tiles off, or visibly lifted after a storm
- Water coming in through a roof, a flat roof or a valley
- A ceiling bulging, sagging or newly cracked
- A chimney stack, coping or parapet that looks unstable
- Render or masonry falling from a wall
- A gutter or downpipe hanging loose above a footpath
Do this first. Clear the area underneath and keep people away, inside and out. Do not stand under a ceiling that is holding water. Nothing should be climbed or inspected from a ladder while the wind is still up - make it safe from ground level and wait for the weather.
Dangerous damage to roofs, chimney stacks, walls, floors and ceilings is an emergency category in its own right. Anything overhanging a public footpath may also be the council's concern as a dangerous structure.
Signs it is this.
- A communal fire alarm or warden call system out of service
- A panel showing a fault that will not clear, or a sounder in continuous fault
- Smoke or heat alarms in a flat dead, missing or removed
- Emergency lighting or an illuminated escape sign not working
- A fire door that will not self-close onto its latch
- A communal escape route obstructed or being used for storage
Do this first. Do not silence a panel and leave it. If detection is out of service in a block, the responsible person needs to know immediately, and an interim measure - a waking watch, or a move to simultaneous evacuation - may be needed until the system is back in service. Clear any obstruction from an escape route straight away.
Under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, communal fire doors in buildings with two or more sets of domestic premises need checking quarterly and flat entrance doors annually. Smoke alarms on every storey, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a fixed combustion appliance, are a separate duty again.
Signs it is this.
- A front or back door that will not lock
- A lock that has been snapped, drilled or has seized
- Glazing smashed or broken at ground level
- A door or frame damaged by a forced entry
- A communal entrance door standing open or failing to latch
- Keys lost or stolen with the address attached
Do this first. Do not leave the property standing open. If there has been a break-in, report it to the police and keep the crime reference number - insurers ask for it, and the council require one before they will treat a broken door or window as an emergency. Photograph the damage before anything is boarded or replaced.
A communal door to a block of flats is a fire safety matter as well as a security one, because it holds the protected escape route. Those go to the front of the queue.
Signs it is this.
- The only toilet in the property blocked, or refusing to flush
- Waste water backing up into a bath, shower or ground floor sink
- A smell of sewage indoors
- An external gully or inspection chamber overflowing
- Several flats affected at once, which points at a shared soil stack
Do this first. Stop using water anywhere in the property. Every flush, every sink and every washing machine cycle makes a backing-up drain worse. Keep children and pets away from contaminated water, ventilate the room, and do not tip drain chemicals into standing waste.
Where a property has only one toilet, a blockage is an emergency rather than a next-day job. If more than one flat is affected the fault is usually in a shared stack or a lateral drain, which changes who is responsible for putting it right.
Signs it is this.
- Someone trapped in a lift
- A lift out of service in a multi-storey block or a retirement scheme
- No lighting in a communal stair, corridor, bin store or car park
- A refuse chute blocked
- Door entry or the intercom down across a block
- A communal booster pump or a district heating system failed
Do this first. If anyone is trapped, use the lift alarm and call the lift maintainer's emergency line. Call 999 if the person is unwell, distressed, or has been in there a while. Never force lift doors and never try to move the car by hand.
A lift out of service matters far more in a block where residents cannot manage stairs. In a retirement scheme or a high-rise it should be treated as urgent whatever the hour.
Signs it is this.
- Black mould on walls, ceilings or around window reveals
- A persistent musty smell that returns after cleaning
- Wet, blown or crumbling plaster at skirting level
- Condensation running down the glass most mornings
- A tenant reporting a health effect, or a child or vulnerable person in the property
Do this first. Treat the report as a clock starting rather than a complaint to file. Get it recorded in writing with photographs and a date, acknowledge it to the tenant, and book an inspection. Do not paint over it, and do not put it down to lifestyle before anyone has looked at the fabric.
Awaab's Law has applied to social landlords in England since 27 October 2025 and sets fixed timescales to investigate and put right damp, mould and emergency hazards. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 contains the power to extend it to the private rented sector, so the sensible course is to work to that standard now.
Be honest about it
What is not an emergency
Calling everything an emergency costs money and trains everyone around you to stop believing you. The jobs below are real repairs and they still need doing. They just need doing on a planned visit, at a planned price, usually the next working day.
Two things flip any of them into urgent: nobody in the property has a safe alternative, or a vulnerable person is affected. One blocked toilet in a one-bathroom flat is an emergency. One of two toilets blocked is not.
If you are unsure, describe it to us and we will tell you honestly which it is. We would rather triage it for free than send someone out at an emergency rate for a dripping tap.
- A dripping tap, or a cistern that fills slowly
- One of two toilets blocked, with the other usable
- A single light fitting or socket not working, with the rest of the circuit live
- A failed oven, extractor, washing machine or other appliance
- A door or window that sticks or drags but still locks
- A radiator cold at one end while the rest of the system works
- A weeping gutter joint in settled weather
- Cracked plaster, blown paint and tired decoration
- Fencing, gates, paths and garden work
On the day
How an emergency call-out runs
Make safe first, price second, repair third. Confusing those three is how emergency work turns into an open-ended bill.
Triage
We work out whether something needs isolating before anyone travels, whether this is really for the gas or electricity network rather than for us, and which trade the job actually needs. That conversation costs nothing.
Make safe
The first visit stops the damage. Water off, circuit isolated, roof sheeted, glazing boarded, appliance capped and labelled. Making safe is not the same as repairing, and we will always tell you which one you have got.
Fixed price to repair
Once it is safe and the cause is visible, you get the scope and the price in writing before the repair is booked. Emergency work gets quoted like any other job, not billed open-ended by the hour.
Documented
Photographs before and after, the certificate or record where one is required, and a written note of the cause. That is what an insurer asks for, and what a tribunal or an ombudsman will look for later.
Local pattern
Why Manchester emergencies look the way they do
Two housing stocks sit side by side here, and they fail in completely different ways. Knowing which one you own tells you what will go wrong first.
The Victorian and Edwardian terraces across Levenshulme, Longsight, Moss Side, Rusholme, Gorton and Harpurhey are solid wall, often with a damp-proof course that has failed or was never there. Slate roofs reach the end of their nail life all at once, pointing and render let water in, and drainage and gutters are frequently shared with next door, so one blockage becomes two peoples problem.
The city centre, Ancoats, Salford Quays and New Islington are apartment blocks, where the emergency is usually communal rather than inside the flat. Lifts, door entry, booster pumps, district heating and the fire alarm panel affect every resident at once, and responsibility is split between leaseholder, freeholder and managing agent before anyone can even start.
- Heating and hot water failures, the most common urgent call-out of all
- Escaping water, and the ceiling damage two floors below it
- Damp and mould, the single most reported problem in rented homes
- Electrical faults, which carry the highest average repair cost
- Slipped slates and blocked gutters after every named storm
- Lockouts, snapped cylinders and forced doors
- Shared soil stacks backing up into ground floor flats
Who is responsible, and who pays
In a normal residential tenancy, section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 puts the structure and exterior on the landlord, along with the installations that supply water, gas, electricity, sanitation, space heating and water heating. That duty cannot be signed away in the tenancy agreement, and the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 lets a tenant act directly through the courts where a property is unfit to live in.
A tenant is generally responsible for damage they or their visitors cause, for ventilating and reasonably heating the property, for testing the alarms, for replacing their own bulbs, and in most agreements for a lockout caused by their own lost keys.
Where a call-out turns out to be tenant-caused, wipes down a toilet or a faulty appliance of their own tripping a circuit, the cost is usually recharged. The safe course is still to attend, make it safe, and settle the invoice question afterwards. Delaying an attendance to argue about who pays is how a small repair becomes a disrepair claim.
Access
You need the tenants permission to enter, and normally twenty four hours written notice, but that does not apply to a genuine emergency where there is a risk to people or serious damage to the property. Keep a record of what you were told, when, what you did about it and when. In practice that record is worth more than any argument about it afterwards.
This is general information, not legal advice. Responsibilities turn on the wording of your own tenancy or lease and on the facts of the situation. Where money or a possession claim turns on it, take proper advice.
Winter readiness
Frozen condensate pipes, burst and frozen pipework, the 1 October heating rule, void property frost protection and a month-by-month checklist. Most winter emergencies were preventable in September.
Read the winter guideWhere the legal duties sit
Fourteen duties, what triggers each one, how often they renew, who is legally allowed to certify them, and the statutory timescales that now apply to damp, mould and emergency hazards.
Read the compliance guide