Property maintenance experts at a Scottish building firm have helped save a West Lothian family from suffering a festive disaster.

Edinburgh-based maintenance company One Call Home Assist was called out on December 25th to help a stranded family in Livingston, whose gas supply had broken down just before they were due to cook their Christmas dinner.

The distraught tenants from Craigshill feared that they would have to forgo their turkey and trimmings and be faced with a less-than-festive feast of leftovers instead. But thanks to a regular maintenance contract organized between their landlord and One Call Home Assist, the tenants were able to get their gas leak fixed quickly and in time for Christmas dinner.


John Dickson, national sales director with One Call Home Assist, said: "Christmas Day is the worst time to have problems with your gas or power supplies. Most people are usually planning a big Christmas dinner and this can be completely ruined if you have a problem such as a gas leak.

"Many emergency builders will charge a large fee for a job like repairing a broken gas pipe if it’s over the Christmas period - but for many people this is the only way to get their oven back in action when there’s been a problem. The choice is either to pay the money for repairs or face having your Christmas ruined.

"In this case, we received the distress call at 10.30am and were able to have a contractor on site to fix the leak within an hour – meaning there was never any danger of the tenants missing their Christmas dinner."

Natasha McLellan, the tenant that made the emergency SoS call, said she had been "blown away" with the help that she had received from the One Call team.

She said: "Having a gas leak on Christmas Day is a nightmare, as you don’t know if you will be able to get it fixed at such short notice. We thought that our Christmas would be ruined, but thankfully we were able to call out the experts from One Call."

One Call Home Assist has been launched by One Call Trade Services, an all trades contractors providing insurance repairs, maintenance and renovations to clients throughout the UK.

(GK)