Contacting us
You can contact us in the following ways:
- Phone the Oxford City Homes Contact Centre - (freephone except for mobiles) 0800 22 76 76
- Our lines are open Monday – to Thursday 7.45am to 6pm and Friday 7.45am to 5.45pm. If you have an emergency repair outside these hours, you should still ring this number.
- If all our lines are busy, you can leave a message about your repair. We will pick this up quickly and phone you back.
- You should be aware that your phone calls to us may be recorded.
- E-mail us - contactcityhomes@oxford.gov.uk
- Visit our Horspath Road Office or Oxford City Council’s Customer Service Centres - addresses are given in Useful contacts in your Tenants’ Handbook
- Fax us - 01865 717032
- Write to us - Contact Centre, Oxford City Homes, Horspath Road, Oxford OX4 2RH
You may also need to contact some other organisations for:
- Gas leaks - if you smell gas you must contact the gas emergency supplier 0800 111999
Note: use a phone outside your house. Then let us know too. - Electricity power cuts - (SEC) 0845 770 8090
- Water supply problems - (Thames Water) 0845 920 0800
Please be aware
- Our operational staff members’ normal working hours are Monday to Thursday 8am to 5pm and
Friday 8am to 4.30pm, but they will carry out emergency work at any time. For most repairs you will
be offered an appointment on a specific day. See Appointments. - We may need to inspect your repair problem to decide exactly what needs to be done.
- Outside normal service hours, we will only respond to emergency repairs.
- Please do not exaggerate the urgency of a problem to get a quicker (emergency) response. This prevents us from responding quickly to real emergencies. We may charge you for the extra costs involved.
- We will charge you for the cost of repairing any damage you cause and for any repairs that cannot
be considered as fair wear and tear or are your responsibility. - In bad weather conditions, or at night, our operational staff cannot, for their own safety, work at
height, for example, on ladders, on scaffolding or on the roof.
Warning - if in doubt, keep them out!
Before you let anyone into your home to carry out a repair, inspection or gas service, you should check their identity card carefully, and check that the work they say they have come to do is a repair or service that you are expecting. If they are a specialist contractor, they will have a works order or letter from us which they should show you. If you are in any doubt, ask the caller to wait outside while you phone us. If they are genuine they won’t mind. In an emergency dial 999.
Tenants’ home contents insurance
We strongly suggest that you take out insurance. For example, if a pipe bursts, we will not normally be responsible for any damage to your belongings – only for repairing the burst pipe. We have identified a good basic insurance scheme for tenants and leaseholders to cover you against damage to, or theft of, your personal belongings, carpets, furniture and other household contents and decorations. You can pay for it on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis. You can either set up a regular payment through your bank or go to any Post Office with your plastic insurance payment card. You can get a leaflet from any Oxford City Council reception or you can download it from our website.
‘Home Contents Insurance for Oxford City Council tenants and leaseholders’
