With Christmas just around the corner it’s a good time to start thinking about boiler breakdown cover, with engineers becoming busier in the colder months it’s all the more important to have a boiler service contract on hand to ensure you and your family are covered in the event of an emergency boiler or central heating breakdown.

Boiler service contracts range in cover from just your boiler up to and including drains, plumbing, central heating pipes & radiators and also electrical care. British Gas HomeCare offer all of these via their boiler insurance product right up to British Gas HomeCare 400 which covers every aspect of  your homes utilities, what’s more until the 31st December they’re giving away 1 month free – it’s very rare for British Gas to provide discounts or vouchers on the HomeCare product so make sure you sign-up before the offer expires.

So What Is British Gas Boiler Homecare?

Having a new boiler or central heating system installed undoubtedly adds value to your home and can help with saving money on energy bills; but these can prove costly despite the longevity they can bring to any system. So the British Gas Boiler Homecare Plan aims to provide a maintenance package that prioritises the improvements of these facilities as and when required, which can be useful when the guarantee or warranty of a new product expires.

For a monthly subscription, customers can opt for one of four different packages, each one marked by a different level that has a range of benefits. Level 100 (originally 1 star) provides an insurance against a broken boiler and ensures that the customer will receive an immediate repair from a qualified (CORGI) registered engineer – the cost of their labour and any parts are covered in the monthly fee.

The hassle of searching for a reliable and local engineer is replaced with a single helpline number for customers and operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week which can be much more appealing to those more vulnerable customers such as elderly people who might struggle to find a reliable engineer, or for a landlord who is absent from the property when problems occur but needs to ensure that repairs and services have been exacted professionally and legally.

Levels 200, 300 and 400 (originally 2, 3 and 4 star) are variants on this package including the boiler but also giving insurance against leaking radiators or broken fuse boxes – each one worth a slightly higher monthly fee but with a larger guarantee in what the package covers.

Despite the deregulation of the gas and electricity markets in the late 1990s, British Gas remains a popular provider of both fuels in the United Kingdom, with 11 million gas customers and 5 million electricity customers. British Gas Services – formed in 1994 to specialise in the installation and servicing side of the business – is likewise the leading installer of domestic gas central heating systems in the United Kingdom.

British Gas offers a range of standard and online payment tariffs, together with a number of boiler and central heating system service plans, all of which are backed by call centres that are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; and a nationwide team of more than 5,000 academy-trained engineers.

The “Click Energy 5″ online tariff, for example, offers substantial savings to “dual fuel” customers – in other words, customers who are supplied with gas and electricity – when compared to traditional offline cash or cheque payments, with the additional benefits of paperless billing, and no cancellation charges.

Similarly, the British Gas “Homecare” programme provides various levels of service cover – from a boiler and its controls, to a complete central heating system, plumbing and drains – for a graduated fixed fee which includes parts and labour. This service is, however, completely independent of gas or electricity supply so that if you should wish to move away from British Gas as an energy supplier at any time your cover is not affected.

Why should I get boiler insurance?
Having boiler insurance will give you security and peace of mind, knowing that if your system breaks down, your insurance provider will send someone out to repair it. Regular maintenance checks carried out by qualified personnel on your boiler and central heating system, as part of your heating cover plan will give added protection.

Often this type of insurance is offered by your energy supplier but it’s wise to shop around to find the deal that’s best for you.

Which boiler insurance should I choose?
The price of insurance plans and what they cover can vary greatly between providers. It’s important to choose one which suits the type of heating system and boiler you have.

If your boiler is the standard gas type, such as a combi, your heating cover should include at least some if not all of the following:

• The cost of parts and labour for any repairs needed to your boiler
• Help with the cost of replacing your heating system if it is beyond repair
• Annual maintenance
• A set or unlimited amount of claims per year

There are a wide range of heating cover plans to choose from. For help in making an informed choice on what plan is right for you try one of the price comparison sites like uSwitch, one of our favourite suppliers is British Gas HomeCare which provide high levels of service and have won Which? Best Buy awards.

The discount for HomeCare 100, 200, 300 and 400 HomeCare insurance policies will end soon. The £1 per month discount that has been running for the last few months will end this Friday 28th. You can still apply for British Gas HomeCare and receive the £1 off until Thursday night so please hurry.

HomeCare is one of the most comprehensive boiler insurance and central heating breakdown services available and covers gas, condensing and combi boilers and central heating systems fitted in most homes. From just £9 per month all of the HomeCare policies were voted as Which? best buys in a recent survey.

Bucking the trend in an increasingly competitive market central heating and boiler installations by British Gas rose 24% to 113,000 in the past year, average revenue per installation came in at £3,018.

Uswitch.com raised the issue after Britsh Gas’s Home Services division announced a rise in revenue to £348m, an increase of 32%. Profit in the same period rose 48% to £151m.

Continued growth in British Gas’s HomeCare product which covers central heating and boiler breakdown helped increase revenue with a 7% increase in customers taking out HomeCare, this takes the number of active contracts to a staggering 7.6m.

Figures for British Gas’s Ondemand non-contract emergency breakdown repair service also rose by 19% to 414,000 call-outs.

British Gas may not be the cheapest supplier but strong results such as these ensure continued investment in technology and engineering deployment.