What tenants can expect from Phillip James

On the day of move-in we meet you at the property with the keys, the signed inventory, and a copy of the tenancy agreement. We walk the property with you — testing alarms, taking meter readings, showing you where the stopcock and consumer unit are. You'll get our property manager's name, direct number, and email at move-in. They are your single point of contact for the rest of the tenancy — not a generic inbox, not a different person each time you call. Within the first week we'll send you the inventory and check-in report to review and sign electronically. You have seven days to add comments or photos of anything we missed. After that the document becomes the agreed condition baseline for the property — what we measure against at check-out.

Maintenance requests go through our online portal, the link to which we send you at move-in. The portal lets you upload photographs, describe the issue, and confirm access — and most issues are diagnosed without needing a separate phone call. Our response targets vary by severity. A genuine emergency — no heating in winter, no water, a gas leak, a security risk — gets a contractor on site within four hours. An urgent issue, by which we mean one of two heating sources out, a contained but persistent leak, or a failed appliance, gets instructed within one working day and on site within three. Routine issues — a cracked tile, a sticking door, a flickering light — get instructed within three working days and on site within ten. We use a small panel of local tradespeople we work with regularly: gas, electrical, plumbing, general maintenance. Most of them we've used for years. They know the properties we manage, they know our standards, and they're insured and certified. If a repair is going to take longer than the target window — a part on backorder, a contractor's diary that's full this week — we tell you as soon as we know, not when you chase us about it.

We answer emails and portal messages on the same working day if they arrive before 4pm, and the next working morning if later. Phone calls during office hours are answered by a person, not a queue. We don't expect you to chase us. If we say we'll get back to you with a date, we give you the date — and if it's going to be a few days because we're waiting on a contractor or the landlord, we say so. Outside office hours we maintain an emergency number for genuine out-of-hours issues — a failed boiler in January, a roof leak in a storm, a security risk. Non-emergencies go to the portal and get picked up the next working morning. When we get something wrong — turn up late for a visit, miss a call back, send the wrong contractor — we own it directly and we tell you what we're doing about it. That's what we'd expect ourselves.

You give us two months' written notice — by email is fine. We confirm receipt within one working day and agree a move-out date with you. A week before move-out we send you a checkout pack: what to leave behind, what to clear out, the meter-reading process, key return arrangements, what we'll be looking for against the original inventory. The check-out inspection is carried out by the same property manager who's looked after the property — by someone who knows what it looked like at the start. We send you the check-out report within three working days of the inspection, with any proposed deductions photographed and itemised against the original inventory entries. The deposit return runs through whichever scheme the deposit was protected in (DPS, MyDeposits, or TDS). Where there are no deductions, or you agree the deductions, the deposit is back in your account within ten working days. Where you don't agree, the scheme runs a free adjudication and we provide our evidence; the adjudicator is independent of us. We've returned full deposits to the majority of the tenants we've ever managed. The deductions we do make are documented, photographed, and explained.