New shared ownership model - initial repair period

You are responsible for keeping your home in good condition and are responsible for arranging and paying for repairs and maintenance in your home. However, SNG will provide support by reimbursing you for the cost of qualifying essential repairs within the first ten years of the property’s life.

This is to help you with unplanned costs that aren’t covered by any warranties associated with your new home.  

Full details of the allowance are explained in your lease, but here’s a summary of how it works: 

You will be able to claim up to £500 per year from us, until the property is 10 years old, for costs which are not covered by a warranty and relate to:   

• Installations for the supply of water, gas electricity and sanitation but not fixtures and fittings or appliances  
• Pipes and drainage  
• Installations for heating and heating water

It does not cover deliberate or avoidable damage.

We have produced a list of what we will and won’t reimburse you for [pdf, 70KB] .

(This is in line with Sec 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act).

It does not cover qualifying repairs that are covered by an existing warranty, guarantee or insurance policy (e.g. your boiler’s initial warranty), although the allowance can be used to help with any excess payable. 

Any unused repairs allowance for the current year is ‘rolled over’ to the following year (i.e. to a max allowance of £1k). If you do not need to claim the full £500 allowance for this year, the unused balance will be rolled over to the following year but if not claimed in that subsequent year it will expire. This means your total allowance could only be up to a maximum of £1,000.

If you sell your home within the ten year period, any allowance remaining is transferred to the new owner.

The allowance is linked to the property and so joint tenants should decide who will make the claim as only one of you may do so. 

Notify us 

Unless your repair is an emergency you will need to notify us of a repair first. You can do this by logging into MySovereign and completing the Repair form (please upload any relevant documents - photos of the damage, quote from a trades person etc).  

If your repair is an emergency, this notification step will not be appropriate - you should make the necessary arrangements with a tradesperson to rectify the issue then submit a reimbursement request form by logging into MySovereign.

If all required sections of the form are completed using the drop downs, when submitting the request, you will be immediately notified that the reimbursement request is eligible, subject to us receiving all relevant information and completing some checks.  

If you cannot find an option from the drop-down lists which describes the issue, select ‘my repair is not listed’ and we will be in contact to discuss further with you.   

If you cannot access MySovereign, you will need to contact the customer services team who will put you through to the specialist team who will help you through the notification.   

If the notification of a repair is approved, you will then need to source a trades person using the list of approved methods to undertake the work. You should use a TrustMark  approved tradesperson to carry out the repair –  however, if this is not possible because there is not one in your area then we suggest you find a tradesperson by using:

• Gas Safe Register where the qualifying repair includes the supply/use of gas. 
• NICEIC where the repair includes the supply/use of electricity.
• A trusted platform listing local tradespeople which allows you to check their qualifications and insurance.

Before you submit a repair notification you will need to check whether the repair is covered by a warranty and if so, you should make a claim through this rather than progressing a request with ourselves. If such a claim involves you paying an excess, then you can request reimbursement for that using the allowance. 

Request reimbursement 

If your repair is an emergency, this notification step will not be appropriate - you should make the necessary arrangements with a tradesperson to rectify the issue then submit a reimbursement request form by logging into MySovereign. 

You will need to confirm who has completed the work, upload a copy of the invoice and where applicable photos of the work completed and details of servicing/warranties. 

Once you have submitted the form our team will assess the request and confirm if your request has been approved or declined within seven days.   

Once the request has been approved payment will be made within ten working days.   

If you are unable to use MySovereign, you will need to contact our customer service team on 0300 5000 926 who will take you through completing a reimbursement request.   

If you are unsure of what repairs have been made to date and what remains on your balance, you can request this information to be sent to you either through:   

Completing a form on MySovereign 

or 

Contacting our customers services team  

The information will be sent to you in the format you choose (email or letter).

Any unspent allowance for the current year will roll into the following year (i.e. your total allowance could be up to a maximum of £1,000). If you do not need to claim the full £500 allowance for this year, the unused balance will be rolled over to the following year but if not claimed in that subsequent year it will expire. This means your total allowance could only be up to a maximum of £1,000.

The allowance can only be used to reimburse you for costs incurred for essential repairs to the components listed and cannot be withdrawn as cash, applied as a credit to your account or used for any other purpose such as staircasing.

You can notify us of an external or structural repair by logging into MySovereign and completing the Tell us about an external/structural repair form:  

If you cannot use MySovereign – or if the issue is an emergency - you can call in to our contact centre 0300 5000 926 and raise a repair request with our contact advisors.  

Once we have received a notification, we will arrange an inspection for our Property Services team to attend your home and complete an inspection of the issue raised. This could either be in person or via telephone/video appointment.  

During the inspection an assessment will be made as to whether the request is covered under the new shared ownership model features or whether it is out of scope. 

If we confirm that the repairs are covered under the new feature, we will confirm whether this is either:

• Response repair 
• Major works 

If the repair is covered and expected to be a response repair the SNG representative will make arrangement for either of the following:

• An SNG trades person to attend and complete the repair 
• A contractor to attend and complete the repair 

If during the inspection it is identified that the works are major the repair will be passed over to our asset team to progress the repair through NHBC or the equivalent warranty provider.