How to Choose an Emergency Plumber (and Avoid Cowboys)

Who are you actually calling when you search at night?

Type "emergency plumber" into a search engine at 11pm and the top of the page is mostly paid adverts. Behind them sit four different kinds of business, and it helps to know which one you have rung before you agree to anything.

The first is a plumbing firm that does the work itself, with its own engineers. The second is a national network that takes the call centrally and sends whichever engineer in its pool is nearest. The third is a lead broker: a website that looks like a plumbing company but sells your job to a tradesperson it has never met, often for a fee that ends up in your bill. The fourth is a one-person business answering their own phone from the van.

Any of the four can do a good job. The problem is when you cannot tell which one you are dealing with, because then you cannot tell who is responsible if the repair fails. Ask directly: "Is the person coming employed by you, or are you passing the job on?" A straight answer is a good sign in itself.

Five checks that take five minutes

You do not need a week of research. These checks can all be done while the water is off and you are waiting for a call back.

• Price structure in full: the call-out charge, what it covers, how labour is charged after that, how parts are priced and whether night or weekend rates apply
• The price confirmed by text or email before anyone sets off, so there is a written record of what you were told
• For a boiler, gas hob or gas fire: the engineer’s seven-digit licence number, checked on the Gas Safe Register for the right type of appliance
• For an unvented hot water cylinder: whether the engineer holds a G3 unvented qualification, since the safety valves on these cylinders are not a job for someone without it
• How you can pay. A card payment gives you more protection than cash or a bank transfer to a personal account

If you smell gas, do not ring a plumber first. Open doors and windows, turn the gas off at the meter if you can reach it safely (never in a cellar), do not use light switches or naked flames, then go outside and call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999. Their visit to make the supply safe is free.

Does a local plumber really matter in London?

A few miles can be an hour at the wrong time of day, so a plumber based near you does tend to arrive sooner and is more likely to come back if the repair gives trouble. Someone who works your area also knows its housing: Victorian terraces with old lead or iron supply pipes, mansion blocks with shared risers and a stopcock two floors down, new-build flats with a combi boiler in a hallway cupboard and pipework boxed behind plasterboard.

But local is a means, not the goal. A firm three boroughs away that gives you a clear price and turns up with the right parts beats a firm round the corner that will not say what the job costs, and that is the test to apply to any emergency plumber in London, us included. Ask whether travel time, parking or the Congestion Charge are added to the bill, because in central London those extras can be the difference between two quotes that sounded the same.

Directories that promise a plumber "in your town" for every town in the country are usually brokers. That is not dishonest in itself, but it means the business you agreed terms with is not the one standing in your kitchen.

Warning signs on the phone and at the door

Most bad experiences with emergency plumbers follow the same few patterns. Any one of these is a reason to thank them and ring someone else:

• They will not give any price until they have seen the job, not even the call-out charge or how labour is charged
• The price quoted on the phone changes the moment they arrive, before they have looked at anything
• Pressure to agree to a large job on the spot, such as a new boiler or a full repipe, at midnight
• Cash only, or payment up front by bank transfer to a personal account
• A Gas Safe card they will not let you look at closely, or a licence number that does not appear on the register
• Work started before you have agreed a price for it

What a good emergency plumber does when they arrive

The first job is to stop the damage: isolate the leak at the nearest valve or the stopcock, make the electrics safe if water has reached them, and drain down if a pipe has split under pressure. Only then should the diagnosis start.

You should then hear what is wrong in plain words, what the options are, and what each one costs. Often there are two: a make-safe repair tonight, such as a compression coupling on a split copper pipe or capping off a failed radiator valve, and a permanent repair later. The repair price is agreed with you on site before any work starts, which is how our 24-hour plumber service works on top of the £60 call-out.

Gas work is carried out by Gas Safe registered engineers. If the engineer finds a gas appliance unsafe, they may ask your permission to turn it off and should leave you a written warning notice explaining why. If an unvented cylinder has to be replaced rather than repaired, the new one must be installed by someone competent and notified under Building Regulations Part G.

Before they leave you should have an invoice showing parts and labour separately and a note of any follow-up work recommended. For more on what can usually be finished in one visit, see what an emergency plumber can fix first time.

Do you need an emergency plumber at all tonight?

Some problems cannot wait: water you cannot stop, water near electrics, no water at all, a ceiling that is bulging, no heating in freezing weather with a baby or an older person in the house, or the only toilet blocked. Others can be made safe and booked with a normal plumber at daytime rates, such as a dripping tap, a slow leak you have caught in a bowl or a radiator that will not warm up.

If you can close the stopcock and the problem stops, you have usually bought yourself time. Our guide on whether it is an emergency or can wait goes through the common cases, and how call-out charges work explains what you are paying for when you do ring.