How the call-out fee works in Richmond upon Thames
One rate, any hour, no night or weekend premium on the call-out itself. There are two situations where you do not pay it at all, and both are worth knowing before you ring.
Charged once, 24 hours a day. Covers the engineer attending and diagnosing the fault. Labour is billed separately at from £110 an hour on weekdays and from £140 out of hours.
If the work runs past three hours, the call-out fee is waived and you pay labour and materials only. You are not charged twice for the same visit.
No call-out fee on any visit, on every property, for landlords, property managers, block managers and letting agents on a collaboration contract. Labour and materials only. Ordinary emergency call-outs pay the standard £60. See our property manager terms.
Every figure above is published in full on our pricing page, and the price for your job is agreed in writing before any chargeable work starts.
A borough of houses, not flats, and that changes the whole job
The 2021 Census counted 80,705 households in Richmond upon Thames. 26.6% were terraced, 25.0% semi-detached and 8.3% detached, so three in five homes are houses. Purpose-built blocks accounted for 28.2%, well under London's 40.3%, and converted or shared houses for 8.8%. Compare that with inner London, where the ratio inverts entirely, and you get a different call log.
In a house the plumbing is yours from the boundary stopcock inwards, which sounds simpler and often is not. There is more of it, it is older, and a great deal of it is outside. External supply pipe runs under drives and side returns, gutters and downpipes on two and three storey elevations, gullies that block with leaf fall from streets that are genuinely tree-lined, and underground drainage the homeowner owns up to the boundary. A leak on a buried supply pipe in a Teddington front garden does not announce itself with a wet ceiling. It shows up as a water bill, a soft patch of lawn and a pressure drop, and finding it without digging the whole drive up is the actual skill.
Tenure reinforces it. 62.4% of Richmond households own their home, against 45.2% across London, with 30.4% owning outright and 32.0% on a mortgage. Only 12.1% rent socially, the lowest share of any borough we cover, and 24.7% rent privately. So the person who calls us is usually the person who owns the problem and can authorise the fix, which is a genuine difference from the flat-dominated boroughs. It also means the decision about whether to do the repair properly or cheaply is made on the spot by someone who is going to live with it.
Space is the other Richmond outlier. 35.3% of households have an occupancy rating of plus two or more bedrooms and only 4.0% are overcrowded at minus one or worse, against 11.1% across London. That is the lowest overcrowding of the five boroughs in this group by a wide margin. Bigger houses with fewer people in them means longer pipe runs, more bathrooms per household, more unused circuits, and heating systems that are more likely to fail from stagnation and sludge than from being run into the ground.
The Thames runs through it, and the council counts the properties
Richmond's own Strategic Flood Risk Assessment makes the point that no other London borough shares: 'The risk to the borough is also increased as the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames is the only London borough which the River Thames dissects. This means there are properties both on the north and south side of the River Thames at risk.' The same document records that 'the upstream extent of the tidal section' is at Teddington Lock, so the borough contains both the tidal and non-tidal river.
The numbers are published. The SFRA notes that 'The Thames CFMP identifies that the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames may have between 1,000-2,000 properties at risk from a 1% annual exceedance probability fluvial flood.' Separately, the council's Local Flood Risk Management Strategy tabulates surface water risk and gives 2,063 residential properties, 535 other properties and 255 unclassified properties inside the 1 in 100 year surface water extent.
Defences exist but they are finite. The SFRA states that the Thames Tidal Defences 'are a collection of walls, embankments, flood gates, pumping stations and barriers designed to protect at-risk properties against flooding from the River Thames', that they 'currently protect properties within the floodplain up to a 1 in 1000 year event', and that the Thames Estuary 2100 plan 'highlights that with some modifications, the Thames Barrier will continue to provide flood protection up until 2070'. The Environment Agency adds that the Thames Barrier 'may also be closed during periods of high flow over Teddington Weir', explicitly 'to reduce the risk of river flooding in some areas of west London including Richmond and Twickenham', and that it has been closed 221 times for flood defence purposes since becoming operational in 1982.
For surface water the council has mapped seven Critical Drainage Areas by name: Twickenham, St Margarets, Strawberry Hill, Richmond and Mortlake, Petersham, Teddington and Hampton Wick. It has also identified throughflow catchment areas where groundwater moves laterally through permeable deposits over clay, naming Richmond Hill, Strawberry Hill, Marble Hill and St Margarets West, with East Sheen Common as a potential fifth.
This matters to plumbing in a way people underestimate. Basements and lower ground floors in these areas take water from outside, not from a burst pipe, and the equipment that keeps them dry is a sump pump, a non-return valve on the foul connection and a functioning gully. Those are the things that fail in a storm, at night, when everything else is also failing. The council has even taken planning action on it: an Article 4 Direction 'is in place to manage basement development in areas potentially at risk of fluvial or tidal flooding', whose purpose is 'to monitor and, if necessary, restrict the development of basements in areas where basement development may increase the risk to life due to flooding'.
85 conservation areas, and what that does to a repair
Richmond states that it 'contains 85 conservation areas which range from former historic villages such as Hampton, town centres such as Richmond and large open spaces like the vast historic Richmond Park and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, a World Heritage Site'. That is a remarkable number for a borough of this size and it means most of the older housing stock sits inside one.
On listed buildings the council's position is short and firm: buildings on the statutory list 'may not be demolished, extended or altered without Listed Building Consent', and 'Whilst some improvements may not require listed building consent, most internal and external alterations are likely to need this, whether they involve changes to the windows, installation of solar panels, adding heat pumps, or other initiatives'. The council explicitly names heat pumps in that sentence, which is worth knowing before anyone specifies one for you.
In practice we separate the emergency from the reinstatement. Stopping a leak, isolating a supply and making a building watertight is never the problem. The problem is what comes afterwards: a replacement soil stack on a visible elevation, a boiler flue through a protected facade, a condensate run out through a sash window, or cast iron rainwater goods swapped for plastic because plastic was on the van. Original wrought and cast iron downpipes and gutters are part of the character these areas were designated to protect, and replacing them in the wrong material is the kind of decision that is cheap on the day and expensive at the planning enforcement stage. Our out-of-hours work uses reversible methods where it can, and we flag anything permanent that touches the fabric before we do it rather than after.
Kew adds a further layer. The Royal Botanic Gardens are a World Heritage Site designated in July 2003, and the council's own Kew Green appraisal records that the area 'falls within the buffer zone of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew World Heritage Site'. Work in a buffer zone is not prohibited, but it is looked at more carefully, and that is a reason to get the specification right the first time.
There is no selective or additional licensing here, and that surprises people
This is the point most guides get backwards, so it is worth stating plainly. Richmond upon Thames operates the mandatory national HMO licensing scheme and nothing else. Its published HMO licensing policy says so in two separate places. On additional licensing: 'We do not intend to apply for additional discretionary powers to extend the licensing of all HMOs in a specific area where HMOs are so badly managed as to give rise to particular problems from tenants or members of the public, such as anti social behaviour. Such powers are not necessary in this Borough at present as there are no areas where several HMOs are linked to anti social behaviour.'
On selective licensing: 'Similarly we do not intend to apply for new powers to introduce selective licensing for all private sector housing (including non HMOs) in designated areas. These powers enable LAs to license properties in an area where there is low housing demand or anti-social behaviour. These additional powers are not necessary as there are no areas of low housing demand in the Borough and no problems with anti social behaviour associated with particular types or areas of housing at present.' That policy is dated and licensing across London is in flux, so a landlord should check the council's current position before relying on it, but as things stand a Richmond landlord with a single let family house needs no licence at all.
Where mandatory licensing does bite, the amenity standards are specific and they are plumbing standards. Richmond's Minimum Amenities Standards for Houses in Multiple Occupation 2020 require 'Central heating, fixed gas fires or mains wired fixed electric heaters capable of maintaining an average minimum temperature 18°c' with a 'Minimum temperature of 21°c achievable in the occupancy room', and require that each unit of accommodation 'can control the temperature within their dwelling', with 'Portable oil or gas heaters not permitted'. Bathrooms must have 'An adequate supply of cold and constant hot water' and be 'Adequately heated and ventilated'. Kitchens must have 'Drinking water supplied, hot and cold water and waste drainage, protected from frost damage, with sink and drainer board'. Gas appliances must be 'checked for safety every 12 months by a Gas Safe registered engineer', with the record given to tenants within 28 days of the check or to new tenants before they move in, and kept for two years.
On penalties, we are not going to attribute a figure to Richmond that Richmond does not publish. Its private sector housing enforcement policy points to a separate procedure document for setting the level of a financial penalty rather than stating a maximum. The statutory ceiling under section 249A(4) of the Housing Act 2004 is £40,000, raised from £30,000 with effect from 1 May 2026. Treat that as the law rather than as a Richmond figure.
Gas heating dominates, which makes the failures predictable
80.5% of Richmond households heat with mains gas only, the highest share of any borough in this group and well above London's 70.5% and England's 74.0%. Only 7.7% are electric only, against 12.6% across London, and just 1.3% are on district or communal heat networks. Another 7.3% run two or more types of central heating, which usually means a gas system supplemented by something else in an extension or a loft conversion.
A borough this heavily gas-heated has a very seasonal call pattern. The first genuinely cold week of the year produces a wave of boilers that have sat idle since March and will not fire, pumps seized after six months of stagnation, and radiators that have to be bled floor by floor in a three storey house. In larger period houses the heating circuit is often long, poorly balanced and full of magnetite from decades of open vented operation, so the symptom is cold radiators upstairs and a boiler cycling on overheat rather than an outright failure.
The other predictable failure is frost. Richmond has more external and semi-external pipework per home than the flat-dominated boroughs, including condensate discharges from condensing boilers that were routed outside because there was an easy wall to go through. A 21.5mm condensate pipe run externally in plastic will freeze and lock the boiler out at the first hard frost, and it is one of the most common no-heat calls we take in this borough. Thawing it is a ten minute job. Rerouting it internally, or upsizing and insulating it so it does not happen again next winter, is the repair we actually recommend.
What actually fails in Richmond upon Thames property types
Richmond's building stock is older, larger and lower density than anywhere else we work, and it sits alongside a tidal river. These are the failures each property type generates, and how we approach them.
Labour is £90/hr on weekdays and £120/hr out of hours, billed in 15-minute increments, with a fixed written price agreed after diagnosis and before the repair starts. Full rates are published on our pricing page.
Getting a van to your door in Richmond upon Thames
Richmond is cheap to park in by London standards and awkward to drive across. The river splits it, the park closes at dusk, and the controlled parking zones run on wildly different hours depending on which village you are in.
Trade parking here costs pounds, not tens of pounds
Richmond sells trader parking as scratchcards and pre-booked pay-as-you-go sessions rather than an expensive daily permit. On the council's published trader parking permit costs, a pre-booked session is £1.80 in almost every zone and £3.55 in zone A1 Richmond Town and zone A2 Richmond Hill, with scratchcard booklets of ten at £17.65 and £35.30 respectively. What one card buys depends on the zone: in short-hours zones it is 'Valid for one session', and in longer-hours zones including B1 North Barnes, E South Twickenham, ES East Sheen, J Townshend, KA Kew, KB South Kew, M Mortlake, S3 St Margarets Riverside, T, T2, T3, T4 and T6 Teddington, WC Whitton Central, WS Whitton South and X1 Broom Park it is 'Valid for one full day'. It is inside our rate either way.
Controlled parking hours vary by an order of magnitude
The council groups its zones into three bands and gives examples for each: a 2 or 4 hour CPZ operating 'Monday to Friday/Saturday 10am to Noon or Monday to Friday/Saturday 10am to 2pm', a 6.5 to 10 hour CPZ operating 'Monday to Friday/Saturday 10am to 4.30pm or Monday to Friday/Saturday 8.30am to 6.30pm', and a more than 10 hour CPZ operating 'Monday to Sunday 8.30am to 6.30pm or 8am to 10pm'. A two hour zone in a residential street and a fourteen hour zone near a station are completely different problems for a van that needs to sit outside for three hours. We check the zone before we set off.
The river is a barrier, not a feature, when you are driving
Richmond is the only London borough the Thames dissects, and there are few crossings inside it. A job in Barnes or Mortlake on the south bank and a job in Kew or Richmond on the north bank are not neighbours in driving terms even when they look close on a map. We dispatch on the correct side of the river rather than the nearest pin, which is the single biggest thing that keeps an engineer moving here.
Richmond Park closes, and it is not a through route at night
The Royal Parks state that in Richmond Park 'The vehicle gates open from 7:30am (7am during British Summer Time) and close at dusk each day, which varies throughout the year', and that following the Movement Strategy trials 'Visitors can drive between Richmond Gate and Kingston Gate at all times, and between Richmond Gate and Roehampton Gate on weekdays. Other park roads provide access to the car parks only.' Anyone routing an out-of-hours job through the park is going to arrive late. We route around it after dark as a matter of course.
ULEZ applies, the Congestion Charge does not
Richmond Council states it directly: 'The zone operates across all London boroughs, meaning that the whole of Richmond upon Thames is now included within it', and 'The zone does not include the M25.' ULEZ is £12.50 a day for non-compliant vehicles. The Congestion Charge covers central London only at £18 a day between 07:00 and 18:00 Monday to Friday and 12:00 to 18:00 at weekends and on bank holidays, and Richmond sits well outside that zone, so there is no £18 daily charge on a job here. TfL does not describe the Congestion Charge boundary in prose, so if you want certainty for a specific address its own postcode checker is the place to look. Either way the cost is inside our labour rate and never appears as a separate line.
One company for the water and the sewers
Richmond Council states that 'Thames Water supplies drinking water in the Richmond Borough' and that 'Thames Water is responsible for ensuring the maintenance, repair and clearance of all sewers within the Borough'. It also explains why gullies matter so much here: 'Generally, road gullies connect to Thames Water sewers, which are either surface water only or are combined sewers that carry surface water and foul drainage. The effectiveness of the gullies, particularly in intensive storms, is dependent upon the capacity of the Thames Water sewers.' On hardness, Thames Water states that all the water in its region is hard, on a published scale where soft is up to 100 mg/l of calcium carbonate, slightly hard 100 to 150, moderately hard 150 to 200, hard 200 to 300 and very hard above 300. We do not publish a number for your individual supply zone because Thames Water's per-postcode lookup sits behind a bot-detection challenge and we will not work around it. You can check your own zone on the company's water quality page.
Home Services in Richmond upon Thames
Gas Safe and NICEIC certified engineers working across Richmond's period houses, riverside properties, conservation areas and converted flats. Most jobs finish on the first visit, and where a repair touches protected fabric we tell you what consent is likely to be needed before we start.
Emergency Plumbing
Burst supply pipes, frozen and split external runs and sudden pressure loss in Richmond's larger period houses, where much of the pipework is outside or buried.
Learn more →Boiler Repair & Service
Professional boiler repairs and installations for all makes.
Learn more →Blocked Drains
Gullies, interceptors and private drainage in a borough with seven named Critical Drainage Areas, where a blocked gully in a storm is a flooding problem rather than a nuisance.
Learn more →Leak Detection
Acoustic correlation for buried supply pipes under drives and side returns, and thermal tracing in listed and conservation-area buildings where opening the wrong wall is the expensive mistake.
Learn more →CCTV Drain Survey
Pre-purchase and post-flood surveys on private drainage, including checking for the non-return valves that stop a surcharging sewer coming back up through a ground floor.
Learn more →Electrical Work
NICEIC certified electricians for fuse boards, rewires, sockets and emergency faults.
Learn more →Central Heating
Long, unbalanced circuits in three storey period houses, plus the frozen external condensate runs that lock out boilers on the first hard frost in a borough where 80.5% of homes heat with gas alone.
Learn more →Redecorating
Interior painting, plastering and decorating after repairs or for full property refresh.
Learn more →General Repairs
Handyman services, property maintenance and general repairs for landlords and homeowners.
Learn more →PPM Contracts
Planned Preventative Maintenance for landlords and property managers. Fixed monthly pricing.
Learn more →Unvented Cylinders
G3 qualified engineers for unvented hot water cylinder installation and servicing.
Learn more →Power Flushing
Magnetite in old open vented circuits is the reason upstairs radiators stay cold in large Richmond houses. Flushing restores output before you buy a new boiler.
Learn more →Compliance & Specialist Services in Richmond upon Thames
Landlord and homeowner compliance across TW1, TW2, TW9, TW10, TW11, TW12, SW13 and SW14. Richmond runs only the mandatory HMO licensing scheme, but its published amenity standards are specific about heating and hot water, and listed building consent covers most alterations. Gas safety, cylinder certification, drainage surveys and restoration, all documented.
Gas Safety Certificate (CP12) Richmond upon Thames
Gas Safety Certificate coverage across TW1–2 and the wider south-west london area.
Book gas safety certificate →EICR (Electrical Installation Condition Report) Richmond upon Thames
EICR coverage across TW1–2 and the wider south-west london area.
Book eicr →Commercial Plumber Richmond upon Thames
Commercial Plumbing coverage across TW1–2 and the wider south-west london area.
Book commercial plumbing →Water Damage Restoration Richmond upon Thames
Water Damage coverage across TW1–2 and the wider south-west london area.
Book water damage →Why Choose Us for Richmond upon Thames?
Working in a borough of period houses, conservation areas and river flood risk is a different trade from working in towers. Here is what we bring to a Richmond call-out specifically.
- Acoustic correlation for buried supply pipe leaks rather than digging up a drive to look
- Engineers who know the river splits the borough and dispatch on the correct bank
- Reversible emergency work in listed and conservation-area buildings, with consent flagged before anything permanent
- Sump pumps, non-return valves and gully clearance treated as flood protection, not as an afterthought
- Frozen condensate and frost damage work through the winter, which is the commonest no-heat call here
- Fixed price agreed after diagnosis, before the repair starts
- Available 24/7, 365 days a year
Areas Within Richmond upon Thames We Cover
Richmond runs from Barnes and Mortlake in the north east, across the river through Richmond and Twickenham, out to Hampton and Teddington in the south west. The building stock and the flood risk change as you go.
Georgian and Victorian town centre stock, much of it listed or in a conservation area. Richmond Hill is one of the council's identified throughflow catchment areas for groundwater.
Critical Drainage Area 001 in the council's surface water mapping. Dense Victorian and Edwardian terraces with original rainwater goods and buried supply runs.
Critical Drainage Area 006, and the point on the Thames where the tidal section ends at Teddington Lock. Large period stock with long heating circuits.
Critical Drainage Area 002 and a throughflow catchment area. Basements and lower ground floors here take water from outside as often as from a burst pipe.
Conservation-area terraces inside the buffer zone of the Royal Botanic Gardens World Heritage Site, designated in July 2003. Repairs to visible elevations need specifying properly.
North bank of the river with its own crossing problem. Mortlake sits inside Critical Drainage Area 004 alongside Richmond.
Critical Drainage Area 005. Lower density, larger plots, longer external pipe runs and more buried supply pipe to go wrong.
Former historic village named in the council's own description of its conservation areas. Detached and semi-detached stock with outbuildings and long service runs.
Critical Drainage Area 003 and a throughflow catchment area, so both surface water and groundwater are live issues for basements here.
Hampton Wick is Critical Drainage Area 007. Whitton has its own full-day trader parking zones, which changes how a longer job is planned.
30–45 minutes to Richmond upon Thames
Based on current engineer positions across South-West London
Richmond upon Thames plumbing questions we get asked
Do I need a licence to rent out my property in Richmond upon Thames?
Only if it is a mandatory HMO. Richmond's published HMO licensing policy states that the council does 'not intend to apply for additional discretionary powers to extend the licensing of all HMOs in a specific area', and separately that it does 'not intend to apply for new powers to introduce selective licensing for all private sector housing (including non HMOs) in designated areas', on the basis that 'there are no areas of low housing demand in the Borough'. So unlike several neighbouring boroughs, a single family let here needs no licence. That policy is dated and licensing across London has been changing quickly, so check the council's current position before relying on it. Where mandatory licensing does apply, Richmond's amenity standards are specific: heating capable of an average minimum of 18°C with 21°C achievable in the occupancy room, individual temperature control, no portable oil or gas heaters, and an adequate supply of cold and constant hot water to baths and showers.
My basement flooded and it was not a burst pipe. Is that something you deal with?
Yes, and it is a real Richmond problem rather than a rare one. The council's Local Flood Risk Management Strategy counts 2,063 residential properties inside the 1 in 100 year surface water extent, and its Strategic Flood Risk Assessment reports that the Thames Catchment Flood Management Plan identifies between 1,000 and 2,000 properties at risk from a 1% annual exceedance probability fluvial flood. Seven Critical Drainage Areas are mapped by name: Twickenham, St Margarets, Strawberry Hill, Richmond and Mortlake, Petersham, Teddington and Hampton Wick. Groundwater adds throughflow catchment areas at Richmond Hill, Strawberry Hill, Marble Hill and St Margarets West. The plumbing that keeps a basement dry in those conditions is a sump pump, a non-return valve on the foul connection and a clear gully, and all three are things we fit, test and clear.
Why does my boiler shut down on the coldest night of the year?
In this borough it is usually the condensate pipe. 80.5% of Richmond households heat with mains gas only, the highest share of the boroughs we cover, and a great many of those condensing boilers discharge condensate through an external plastic pipe because there was an obvious wall to go through. Below freezing the condensate ices up inside the pipe, the boiler detects that it cannot drain and locks itself out. Thawing it takes minutes. The reason it happens again the following winter is that nothing about the installation changed, so what we actually recommend is rerouting the run internally where that is possible, or upsizing and insulating it where it is not. It is a small job that removes an annual emergency.
My house is listed. Can you still do an emergency repair?
Yes. Stopping a leak and making the building safe is not the issue. The issue is what comes afterwards. Richmond states that listed buildings 'may not be demolished, extended or altered without Listed Building Consent', and that 'most internal and external alterations are likely to need this, whether they involve changes to the windows, installation of solar panels, adding heat pumps, or other initiatives'. With 85 conservation areas in the borough, a great deal of the older stock is also in one. So we do the emergency work with reversible methods where we can, and anything permanent that touches the fabric gets flagged first: a new soil stack on a visible elevation, a boiler flue through a protected facade, a condensate run out through a sash window, or cast iron rainwater goods replaced in the wrong material.
There is water coming up through the ground floor when it rains hard. Is that mine or Thames Water's?
It depends where the surcharge starts, and Richmond Council explains the mechanism on its own drains and sewers page: 'road gullies connect to Thames Water sewers, which are either surface water only or are combined sewers that carry surface water and foul drainage', and 'The effectiveness of the gullies, particularly in intensive storms, is dependent upon the capacity of the Thames Water sewers.' The council also states that Thames Water 'is responsible for ensuring the maintenance, repair and clearance of all sewers within the Borough'. If a public combined sewer surcharges, water can come back up through the lowest fitting in your house, and the fix inside your boundary is a non-return valve rather than a call to the sewerage undertaker. We survey the private drainage, prove where the water is entering and fit the protection. Where the fault is genuinely in the public sewer we document it so you have something to send Thames Water.
Will I be charged extra for parking on a Richmond job?
No. Labour is £90/hr on weekdays and £120/hr out of hours, billed in 15-minute increments, and parking is inside that. Richmond is one of the cheaper boroughs for trade parking: the council's published trader costs are £1.80 for a pre-booked pay-as-you-go session in most zones, £3.55 in Richmond Town and Richmond Hill, with scratchcard booklets of ten at £17.65 or £35.30. Depending on the zone one card covers a single session or a full day. ULEZ adds £12.50 a day for non-compliant vehicles across the whole borough, which the council confirms covers all of Richmond upon Thames. Richmond is outside the Congestion Charge zone, so there is no £18 daily charge here. All of it is already in our rate and none of it appears on your invoice.
Question not answered here? Ring 07456 975436 or the office landline on 0207 046 1363 and an engineer will talk it through before you commit to anything.
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