What "24 hour" should actually mean
Plenty of electricians put "24 hour" on the van and mean "we'll try to fit you in this week." We mean the rota has your name against a shift at 3am on a Tuesday, the same as it does at 11am on a Wednesday. Someone is awake, on call, and within reach of a van with the right test equipment in it, every single night.
That's a real cost to run — night shifts, standby pay, keeping enough engineers across Sussex and Kent that nobody is driving an hour and a half to reach you — which is exactly why so few firms actually do it and so many just advertise it. You find out which is which the night you need one.
The call at two in the morning
It goes the same way it would at two in the afternoon. You ring, an electrician answers, and within a minute or two they can usually tell whether you're looking at a nuisance trip that can wait for daylight or something that needs isolating right now. If it's the latter, you're talked through making the property safe before anyone's even in a van.
You get an arrival time before you hang up — not "sometime tonight," an actual window based on where the nearest engineer genuinely is. Roads are quieter overnight, so if anything, the small hours can move faster than a Friday teatime callout.
Every hour, every day of the year
Weekends, bank holidays, Christmas Day — the rota doesn't thin out for any of them. The jobs that land at the worst possible time are usually the ones you didn't plan for: an immersion heater failing the night before guests arrive, a shop freezer tripping out on a Sunday, a tenant ringing a landlord at midnight because half the flat has gone dark.
None of that is unusual to us. It's most of what a genuine 24 hour service exists for.
What it costs
Out of hours work is priced differently to a weekday daytime visit — that's true of any trade — but we tell you the figure before we set off, not once the job is finished. There's no separate "night rate shock" waiting at the end.
We diagnose on site and quote before starting any repair, whatever time the clock says.
Who's actually in the van at night
The same standard applies whatever the hour: the supply is proved dead before anything is opened, the fault is traced to its source rather than patched at the symptom, and nothing goes back into service untested. No apprentice attends alone overnight, and we don't bring in agency subcontractors to plug a gap in the rota.
Every electrician carries a minimum of 18 years in the trade, current Part P registration, and full insurance for the work carried out. Vans carry calibrated multifunction test equipment, and the readings from that testing are what the certificate is based on — not a guess made by torchlight.
Common Questions
Is your 24 hour cover a real person or an answering service?
A real person, every time. Whoever answers at 3am is either an electrician or works directly for one — there's no call centre reading from a script and no voicemail box that gets checked in the morning.
Does it cost more to call at night?
Out of hours work is priced differently to a weekday daytime visit, and we say so before we set off, not after. There's no surprise surcharge added once the job is done.
Are you open on Christmas Day and bank holidays?
Yes. The rota runs every day of the year, including Christmas Day, Boxing Day and every bank holiday. Faults don't check the calendar and neither do we.
What if I'm not sure it's serious enough to call at 2am?
Call anyway. We would rather spend five minutes on the phone telling you it can safely wait until morning than have you lying awake worrying, or worse, trying to sort it yourself.
How quickly can a 24 hour electrician reach me overnight?
Typical arrival is 30 to 90 minutes from the call, day or night. Overnight roads are usually quieter, so if anything the small hours can be faster than rush hour.
