If your home is damaged

It can be very worrying if your home is damaged. This page gives advice on the steps you should follow if your home is damaged in an incident.

Advice for Housing Executive tenants

Step 1: If you are a Housing Executive tenant and your home has been damaged in an incident, report the damage to us as quickly as possible.

Step 2: We will arrange an inspection of the property and schedule the necessary work to ensure your home is habitable in the shortest time possible. It is important that you have home insurance for all personal items such as furniture, carpets and electrical goods. We are not responsible for the replacement of such items.

Advice for private tenants

If you are a private tenant you should contact your landlord or their agents immediately. It may be possible for us to carry out some immediate make the house watertight, but the landlord or their agents will need to give permission for us to carry out this work first.

Advice for owner occupiers

For owner occupiers, we will (only if requested), carry out weather resistant repairs to allow the house to be occupied after an incident.

About the Scheme for Emergency House Repairs (SEHR) for Private dwellings

We can assist occupants of non Housing Executive homes following civil unrest, severe weather, flooding or other major disasters affecting the area.  We do this through The Scheme for Emergency House Repairs. The scheme allows us to carry out temporary first aid repairs to affected homes. It is managed by our local offices.

We can help in two ways:

1. Temporary repairs

• We will carry out temporary repairs, which aim to keep your home secure and weatherproof, and enable you to remain there after a major incident. Such temporary work may include boarding up damaged windows and doors and providing temporary roof coverings to damaged roofs. 
• Repairs to the interior of your home are not normally included within the temporary repairs unless they are in some way essential to the weatherproofing of the home.
• We will assess the nature and the extent of the work necessary and carry out the “first aid” work with your permission. There will be no charge for this service.
• Alternatively, owner occupiers can have the temporary work carried out by their own workmen and make a claim against their insurance company or compensation agency as appropriate. You should contact your insurance company and/or the compensation agency before carrying out any work. 

2. Re-housing
In some cases, it will not be possible to carry out temporary repairs due to either the extent of the work or current conditions. In such cases we will assess the eligibility for temporary re-housing in line with the homelessness legislation guidelines. 

Some properties are excluded from the SEHR scheme including:

• Housing Executive homes
• commercial and industrial premises
• abandoned or unoccupied dwellings and properties under construction
• properties damaged beyond repair
• outbuildings within the confines of residential accommodation.