Tenant maintenance messages: triage, reply and log automatically

Who it’s for

Letting agents and property managers in England who handle repair requests for their landlords

Time to set up

1 hour once, then a few minutes a day

Difficulty

Beginner

Monthly cost

£0

Key dates for this: see UK small-business admin deadlines.

You help a letting agent in England sort tenant repair messages. For each message, give: property, issue, urgency, why, and a short acknowledgement to the tenant. Urgency, using ONLY these rules: EMERGENCY if it mentions a gas smell, a carbon monoxide alarm sounding, CO symptoms, fire, smoke, sparking or burning smells from electrics, or water coming through a ceiling or near electrics; URGENT if there's no heating or no hot water, a smoke or CO alarm still faulty after new batteries, no working toilet or a blocked drain, an active leak, an unsafe appliance the landlord supplied, or damp and mould affecting someone's health; ROUTINE for anything else. If the form's answer to the vulnerability question names someone vulnerable in the home (for example elderly, disabled, a baby or a long-term illness), move the message up one tier: ROUTINE becomes URGENT and URGENT becomes EMERGENCY. Separately mark PERSON REPLIES for any message that mentions ending or leaving the tenancy, rent, the deposit, a complaint, a legal threat or harassment, or that names someone vulnerable in the home; for these, the acknowledgement only says we've received it and a named person will reply, using [name] for the person. Rules for every acknowledgement: never give or promise a repair date or time; never say anything about ending a tenancy, notice or leaving; never blame the tenant; for EMERGENCY, start with: 'If you can smell gas or think there's carbon monoxide, call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 now. If anyone is in danger, call 999.' and say a person is phoning them; for URGENT, say a person will call today; say we'll arrange access with at least 24 hours' notice unless it's an emergency. If the property or issue is unclear, add a short note in brackets saying in plain words what to check, for example (check which flat this is). British English, warm and short.
Messages: [paste]

Here’s a sentence from GOV.UK that every letting agent’s auto-reply should be built around: a “notice to quit” is a written document, “which can include texts or WhatsApp messages” (GOV.UK). Councils can fine landlords and their letting agents up to £7,000 for trying to end a tenancy that way. So the bot that cheerfully replies “No problem, we’ll note you’re leaving!” isn’t saving you time.

Meanwhile, repair requests arrive by WhatsApp at 22:47, by email, by portal and by voicemail, and the one about an eggy smell in the kitchen can sit under the one about a loud extractor fan. This guide gives you one way in, a sort by urgency, an acknowledgement that’s safe to send, and a dated log of every message. That log is your evidence when a landlord, a tenant or a council asks what happened and when.

What does this automation do?

1. Every tenant reports repairs through one Google Form, which shows emergency numbers the moment they submit.
2. Each day, ChatGPT sorts new messages into emergency, urgent or routine, and flags any a person must answer.
3. It drafts an acknowledgement that never promises a date and never mentions ending a tenancy.
4. Everything lands in a Google Sheet with timestamps. Make can do the sorting for you.

What do you need before you start?

• Your managed property list, and an out-of-hours phone number tenants can actually reach.
• A free ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini account, plus Google Forms and Sheets.
• Each landlord’s authority for what you can instruct without asking them first.

How do I set it up?

Step 1: Know which repairs are the landlord’s

GOV.UK says the landlord is always responsible for repairs to the structure and exterior, fire safety, sanitary fittings including pipes and drains, heating and hot water, gas appliances, pipes, flues and ventilation, and electrical wiring (GOV.UK). Tenants are told to report faults that could damage health, like faulty wiring, “straight away”.

A few specific duties set the pace:

• Electrics: if an electrical report says remedial work is needed, it must be done within 28 days, or sooner if the report says so (GOV.UK).
• Alarms: smoke and CO alarms must be repaired or replaced once the landlord is told and finds they’re faulty (GOV.UK).
• Access: at least 24 hours’ notice to enter, though “immediate access may be possible in emergencies” (GOV.UK).

And the one everybody asks about: Awaab’s Law doesn’t apply to private landlords yet. It has set legal deadlines for social landlords to deal with emergency hazards and dangerous damp and mould since 27 October 2025 (legislation.gov.uk, SI 2025/1042 reg 1(2); a government press release said 31 October). The power to extend it is already in the Renters’ Rights Act (section 60), but that section isn’t in force yet. A consultation on extending it to private renting, including when, closes on 18 December 2026 (GOV.UK, 8 October 2026). Landlords must already act on serious hazards. When Awaab’s Law does arrive, a timestamped log is what you’ll want to have.

Step 2: Set up one intake form

A Google Form with these questions, and responses sent to a Google Sheet:

• Property address (dropdown of your managed properties, so nobody types “the flat”)
• Name, best phone number and email address
• What’s wrong (free text)
• Photos (file upload)
• When did it start?
• Is anyone in the home vulnerable, for example elderly, disabled, a baby or someone with a long-term illness? (optional)
• Best times for access

Then tell every tenant, once, by email and in the tenancy welcome pack: “Report repairs here.” Keep answering WhatsApps, but reply to each with the form link so it gets logged.

Step 3: Put the emergency route on the form itself

Emergencies must never wait for a sort, a sheet or a Monday. Put this at the top of the form and in its confirmation message:

Smell gas or think there’s carbon monoxide? Call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 now. Anyone in danger: call 999. Water through the ceiling or near electrics, or sparking or burning smells: call us on [out-of-hours number].

HSE’s advice for suspected carbon monoxide is to call that number, switch off the appliance, shut off the gas at the meter control valve, open doors and windows, and see a GP (HSE). The form handles the paperwork. A phone handles the danger.

Step 4: Sort each message by urgency with ChatGPT

Paste the day’s messages into the copy-paste prompt. It sorts with fixed rules rather than the model’s opinion:

If the form says someone vulnerable lives there (elderly, disabled, a baby or a long-term illness), the message moves up a tier (routine becomes urgent, urgent becomes emergency) and a named person also replies. These are our working labels, not legal categories. GOV.UK sets the duties; you and the landlord set the response times. The worked example above shows message 4, where a leak and a “moving out” line arrive together: urgent for the plumber, person-only for the reply.

Step 5: Send an acknowledgement that promises nothing

Tenants should be told when to expect the repair: GOV.UK says the landlord “should tell you when you can expect the repairs to be done” (GOV.UK). That’s a person’s job, once a contractor has said when. The automated acknowledgement just confirms you’ve got it, says who’ll call, and promises nothing else:

• no repair dates or times
• nothing about notice, leaving or ending the tenancy
• no “you should have” lines

Read each draft before it goes, and phone every emergency yourself.

Step 6: Keep a log that would stand up later

The form’s response sheet already timestamps each report. Add these columns:

Conditional formatting: red for emergency rows not marked completed, amber for urgent rows older than a day. Filter for “Completed” blank every morning.

Step 7: Optional: let Make sort new entries automatically

Before you paste your key into Make

Give this scenario its own expiring OpenAI API key. In Project settings › Limits, set a monthly spend limit and turn on Enforce a hard limit, because “Spend alerts alone don’t stop API traffic.” (You need to be the project owner to set it.) Once the cap is hit, OpenAI stops the calls (spend can go slightly over), which beats a surprise bill. Key leaked? Replace it at once on the API keys page (OpenAI: Best practices for API key safety).

1. Scenario schedule (a setting, not a module): At regular intervals, every 120 minutes.
2. Google Sheets › Search rows where “Urgency” is blank.
3. OpenAI (ChatGPT, Whisper) › Generate a completion with the prompt, one row at a time.
4. Gmail › Create a draft email to the tenant’s email address from the form, with the acknowledgement. It’s a draft: you read it first.
5. Google Sheets › Update a row with the urgency and the time.

Make Free gives 1,000 credits a month. Each 2-hourly check uses 1 credit even when it finds nothing, so 360 a month, and each message uses 3 more, so roughly 210 messages a month fits, plus OpenAI API costs. The OpenAI step uses the OpenAI API, not your ChatGPT account: you need an API key and credit on the OpenAI billing page, paid as you go and separate from ChatGPT Free. Checking every 15 minutes would use more credits than Make Free gives just to look. That’s fine, because emergencies are on the phone, not in this queue. We haven’t run this scenario end to end; Step 4 does the same job by hand.

The copy-paste prompt

You help a letting agent in England sort tenant repair messages. For each
message, give: property, issue, urgency, why, and a short acknowledgement to
the tenant. Urgency, using ONLY these rules: EMERGENCY if it mentions a gas
smell, a carbon monoxide alarm sounding, CO symptoms, fire, smoke, sparking or
burning smells from electrics, or water coming through a ceiling or near
electrics; URGENT if there's no heating or no hot water, a smoke or CO alarm
still faulty after new batteries, no working toilet or a blocked drain, an
active leak, an unsafe appliance the landlord supplied, or damp and mould
affecting someone's health; ROUTINE for anything else. If the form's answer to
the vulnerability question names someone vulnerable in the home (for example
elderly, disabled, a baby or a long-term illness), move the message up one
tier: ROUTINE becomes URGENT and URGENT becomes EMERGENCY. Separately mark
PERSON REPLIES for any message that mentions ending or leaving the tenancy,
rent, the deposit, a complaint, a legal threat or harassment, or that names
someone vulnerable in the home; for these, the acknowledgement only says we've
received it and a named person will reply, using [name] for the person. Rules
for every acknowledgement: never give or promise a repair date or time; never
say anything about ending a tenancy, notice or leaving; never blame the
tenant; for EMERGENCY, start with: 'If you can smell gas or think there's
carbon monoxide, call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 now.
If anyone is in danger, call 999.' and say a person is phoning them; for
URGENT, say a person will call today; say we'll arrange access with at least
24 hours' notice unless it's an emergency. If the property or issue is
unclear, add a short note in brackets saying in plain words what to check, for
example (check which flat this is). British English, warm and short.
Messages: [paste]

What can go wrong?

• An emergency waiting in a queue. The form and the phone handle danger. The sort is for everything else.
• An auto-reply that sounds like notice. Anything about leaving goes to a person. A WhatsApp can count as a written notice.
• Promising dates. “We’ll fix it tomorrow” is a promise your contractor hasn’t made.
• Downgrading by vibe. “Not urgent lol” next to “eggy smell” is still a gas smell. The rules sort by what’s described, not the tone.
• Wales and Scotland. This guide follows England’s rules. Properties elsewhere have their own.
• Data. The prompt needs addresses and the issue. It doesn’t need tenants’ surnames, phone numbers or health details beyond the form’s vulnerability answer.

When the repair’s done and the tenant moves on, our auto-reply for portal leads handles the next round of enquiries, and the landlord register tracker keeps the certificates in order. One practical automation like this, with the £ and the hours it saves, lands in your inbox every Friday if you join our free email.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. GOV.UK: Private renting, repairs (tenant guide)
2. GOV.UK: Private renting, your landlord's safety responsibilities
3. GOV.UK: Renting out your property, making repairs (landlord guide)
4. GOV.UK: Electrical safety standards in the private and social rented sectors: guidance (1 November 2025)
5. GOV.UK: Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (Amendment) Regulations 2022: guidance for landlords and tenants
6. GOV.UK: Clampdown on dangerous homes to protect more tenants and families (8 October 2026): Awaab's Law consultation for private renting
7. legislation.gov.uk: Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025 (in force 27 October 2025)
8. legislation.gov.uk: Renters' Rights Act 2025, section 60 (extends Awaab's Law to private tenancies; not yet in force)
9. GOV.UK: Enforcement measures for landlords, Renters' Rights Act 2025 (1 May 2026)
10. HSE: Gas safety, carbon monoxide awareness FAQs (National Gas Emergency Service 0800 111 999)

This guide is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Tool prices and screens change; we re-check every guide regularly. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we’ll fix it.