Emergency plumber

An emergency plumber is the right call when water or heat is failing in a way that is damaging your home, putting someone at risk or cannot wait until the next working day. If you smell gas or suspect carbon monoxide, do not start by searching for an emergency plumber near you: leave the property and ring the free National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999. For everything else, the order is simple. Stop the water, make the room safe, then find someone who is registered for the work and ready to tell you the terms before they start.

The first ten minutes: what to do before anyone arrives

What you do before the plumber turns up often decides how much damage there is to clean up afterwards. Work through these in order.

1. Close the internal stop tap. It is usually under the kitchen sink, in a downstairs toilet, a utility room or the cellar. Turn it clockwise until the flow stops. If it will not move, do not force it with a wrench; say so when you phone for help.
2. Open the cold taps furthest from the stop tap, starting upstairs, to drain the pipework and take the pressure off the leak.
3. Switch off the heating and hot water if the leak is on the hot side or the stored hot water system is involved. Let an immersion heater cool before touching anything.
4. Make electrics safe. If water is near sockets, light fittings or the consumer unit, switch off the electricity at the mains only if you can reach the switch without standing in water. If you cannot, keep clear and tell the electricity distributor or an electrician.
5. Move belongings and take photographs. You will want dated pictures of the cause and the damage for your insurer.
6. Catch drips with buckets and towels, and keep out of any room where a ceiling is sagging or bulging with water, because it can come down without warning.

A slow weep is a different matter from a burst. For diagnosing those and deciding who owns the pipe, our guide to leaks and burst pipes goes through the signs.

What counts as an emergency, and what can wait

Call-out premiums are real, so it helps to separate the genuinely urgent from the merely annoying. The table is a guide, not a rule: if you are unsure, ring a registered firm and describe what you see.

A boiler breakdown is the common grey area. If the house has gone cold and someone there is elderly, very young or unwell, treat it as urgent. If everyone is healthy and the weather is mild, a next-day visit usually costs less. Our boiler repair guide explains what an engineer will check first.

Gas smells and carbon monoxide come first

Plumbers who work on water systems are not necessarily allowed to work on gas. HSE says natural gas escapes should be reported to the National Gas Emergency Service, and LPG users should ring their LPG supplier instead. HSE also says that if in doubt you should evacuate the building and inform the police.

In practice that means: open doors and windows if it is safe, shut the meter control valve if you know where it is and can reach it, do not use switches, naked flames or anything that sparks, and leave. Make the call from outside.

Carbon monoxide has no smell, which is why symptoms matter. HSE lists headaches or dizziness, breathlessness, nausea, loss of consciousness, tiredness, pains in the chest or stomach, erratic behaviour and visual problems. It says that around seven people die each year from carbon monoxide produced by gas appliances and flues that were not properly installed, maintained or ventilated. The NHS says to call 999 or go to A&E if someone exposed to carbon monoxide is finding it hard to breathe, has suddenly become confused or has lost consciousness, and not to drive yourself to A&E.

Once the supplier has made things safe, the fix itself must be done by someone on the Gas Safe Register. Read how to check a plumber is Gas Safe or WaterSafe registered before you let anyone touch a boiler or gas pipe.

Finding an emergency plumber near you

Search results for urgent plumbers are crowded with lead-generation sites and call centres that pass your job to whoever pays. Two things help. First, ask who will actually attend: a named person or firm, with a van and a registration number you can check. Second, use a directory that lists named businesses rather than a phone line.

MyLocalPlumbers.uk lists local plumbing businesses by town, and each profile says whether its Gas Safe number has been checked. Results are ordered by verified customer reviews first and then by distance, and nobody can pay to move up the list. Browse by area from all cities, pick a firm that says it covers urgent work, and phone it. We do not promise that any listed firm answers at night or will arrive within a set time; confirm that on the call.

Check them before they start work

An urgent job is when people skip checks, so keep them short.

• Gas work: ask for the engineer's Gas Safe ID card number and check it on the Gas Safe Register. The back of the card lists the kinds of gas work they may do.
• Water work: WaterSafe is the register of approved plumbers for water systems. Its approved businesses must have at least one recognised plumber for every five employees doing water supply work, and WaterSafe says a qualified plumber should hold at least an NVQ Level 2 in plumbing or an equivalent.
• Identity: the van, the invoice and the name on the card should match.
• Scams: WaterSafe research found that over a quarter of people have been scammed by rogue plumbers, so be wary of anyone who arrives unprompted, insists on cash only or demands a large payment before they have found the fault.

Questions to ask on the phone

Most disputes come from a missing conversation at the start. Ask:

1. What is the call-out charge, and does it include the first hour or just arrival?
2. What is the hourly rate after that, and are materials charged separately?
3. Is there a minimum charge, and is VAT included in the figure you have been quoted?
4. How soon can someone arrive, and will you be told if that changes?
5. Will they give you a written price before starting any work beyond making the leak safe?
6. Who will issue the certificate or paperwork for any notifiable work?

What changes the price of an emergency call-out

We do not publish prices because none of them are reliable without a visit. These are the factors that usually move a bill:

• The time of day, with evenings, weekends and bank holidays often costing more.
• Distance from the firm's base and how long they expect to be on site.
• Whether the fix is a temporary make-safe or a full repair.
• Access: a pipe under a fitted floor or behind tiling takes longer.
• Parts, especially boiler components or specialist fittings.
• Whether the plumber has to return for a second visit.

If you did not agree a price beforehand, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 says you must pay a reasonable price and no more, and that a reasonable price is a question of fact. The same Act says a trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill. Neither replaces agreeing a figure up front.

Your rights when work starts straight away

For a contract made at your home, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 normally give a cancellation period, and a trader must not begin the service during it unless you have made an express request. If you ask for work to start immediately and then cancel, you may have to pay a proportionate amount for what was done. How this applies to your own job depends on how the contract was made, and Citizens Advice can explain it if there is a dispute.

After the emergency

Ask for a written invoice that describes the cause and the work done. Keep any certificate, as it may be needed when you sell. If your home insurance covers escape of water, contact the insurer before arranging a permanent repair and keep the damaged parts if they ask. Some work, including changes to gas appliances, hot water systems and drainage, falls under building rules; see do you need building regulations approval for plumbing and heating.