Emergency
Water is coming in and the school is open
Isolate the supply, keep people away from anything electrical, then call. In that order.
0333 567 2619Contact the team to arrange your visit. Office closed at weekends. Call during office hours to arrange a visit.
In the next ten minutes
1Isolate
Close the stop tap for the affected building if you know where it is. If you do not, close the incoming stop tap at the boundary. Note the time.
2Make it safe
Keep everyone away from any distribution board, socket, light fitting or electrical intake the water can reach. If water is anywhere near an intake, get the electrical isolation done by someone competent before anything else happens.
3Contain
Buckets, and lift what you can off the floor. Do not open a ceiling to let water out unless you know what is in the ceiling: in a building of a certain age that is an asbestos decision, not a caretaking one.
4Photograph
The water, the affected rooms, and the meter reading. Ten seconds now saves an argument with a loss adjuster later.
5Call
Tell us what is wet, what you have isolated, and whether it stopped when you isolated it. That last answer tells us most of what we need.
What actually counts as an emergency in a school
The test is not how much water there is. It is what the water is reaching, and whether the school can keep operating.
- Water reaching an electrical intake, a distribution board or a light fitting
- Water undermining a slab, a path, a wall or a boundary
- Loss of supply or pressure that closes the toilets or the kitchen, which closes the school
- Water in a room the school cannot vacate, such as a hydrotherapy pool hall or a hygiene suite
- A ceiling holding water, in a building where the ceiling may contain asbestos
A high water bill, a boiler needing a weekly top-up, or a damp patch that has been there since last term is not an emergency. It is worth dealing with, and it is worth dealing with properly rather than at 6pm on a Friday. Start with the symptoms instead.