UK Landlord Forum / Life

A few weeks ago tenant contacted (not via agent as they are supposed to) to say there were problems with electrics.  My son went round and found no sockets working in house and they had 2 pin plugs in 3 pin sockets! (Tenants are foreign and used to this type of plug but have lived in U.K. for a while so knew this wasn't right thing to do).  They have only been in our property for 6 weeks.
My son thoughtught it might simply be that fuse had tripped but he couldn't sort it out so he contacted the agent who sent round emergency electrician within 2 hours.  Tenant refused to let him in as she had called out another electrician.  We were duly informed that the problem was not related to their use of incorrect plugs but a boiler leak which had allowed water to make contact with one of the sockets. 
Heard nothing more until 2 days ago when tenant sent bill via agent for £458 for 3 hours labour for checking consumer unit and disconnecting sockets.  I might add that we had an electrical upgrade a few months ago costing £1300+.
My question is do we have to pay this bill which seems grossly inflated and we still don't know if any damage has been caused to the property by this electrician's 'repairs'.

Your AST should clearly outline what happens in this kind of scenario..? Review it please and let us know.

Given that you sought to provided a remedy to the problem within a reasonable time, and assuming that there's nothing in the contract allowing tenants to authorise their own repairs, and they've not been your tenants long enough for it to become established practice, then I don't think you're under any legal obligation to pay. As Hippogriff says, check the contract.

I dug out the clause in my AST... I might tighten that up a bit on next review:

3.3.16 Not to engage any contractor, or otherwise incur expenditure, on behalf of the Landlord (except in case of emergency) without prior written agreement from the Landlord.

The only loophole in that is Emergency.  You would then have to define what an Emergency is 

It's like you're reading my mind. But you're not... I know that.

Thank you for your responses.  I can't find anything in tenancy agreement similar to the clause you quote.  Think it's something we need to have included in future!  Hopefully our agent will sort it out.