Help with landlord?

[rmc2001]

Our boiler is broken so that we have no hot water. We notified the landlord of this on Tuesday evening. As of now (Friday afternoon) he has not organised anyone to even come out and look at the boiler let alone attempt a repair. What can I do in this situation? He hasn’t replied to any messages since yesterday morning. Could I organise a repair myself and invoice him for the cost or am I at risk of not getting the money back?
We also a couple of weeks ago had an issue with the lock on our front door, it broke so that we couldn’t lock it. He replied to our initial message saying he’d get it sorted the next day. The next day he then completely ignored all our messages all day so we ended up going 36 hours without being able to lock our house. Then he finally arranged a locksmith but is charging us the repair cost (including a weekend fee which wouldn’t have been incurred if the lock had been fixed when we first notified him). We have not yet agreed to pay the charge. Initially we were thinking we’d just accept it as it’s not very much money, but now I just feel like he’s taking advantage of us. Not really sure what to do. Any help please?

Without knowing what area/country you’re in I don’t know the exact rules - but I’d call your local authority or a renters charity or something similar to ask what you’re within your rights to do.

For our current rental, we give the landlord a courtesy heads up about any issues, then we find someone to fix it, provide the landlord a receipt and take it out of next months rent. But in our previous rental the landlady would have never allowed it, she always had the same handyman in to do everything and she sorted the payment herself and billed us if it was something we had broken.

We're in England.
He uses the same handymen and I think he'd be pretty annoyed if I got someone else to fix it tbh. Last Winter the boiler broke and one of the excuses of why it took so long to fix was that the handyman he uses was on holiday... (it had been playing up for ages and I kept asking to get it serviced and he'd always agree but then never get it done. Eventually it completely broke and I ended up without hot water for over a week).

I’d contact shelter, or CAB failing that, and ask them.