Multi & Commercial Care
Contract Terms and Conditions

Planned maintenance contract terms for multi-split, VRV/VRF and commercial air conditioning systems. Business customers only.

Last updated: 1 August 2026

1. Parties, and what this contract is

This contract does not cover installation. Supplying and installing new plant — survey, design, deposits, electrical work, commissioning and the installation workmanship guarantee — is governed by our separate installation terms and is quoted as a project, not under this contract. This contract begins once plant is installed and in use.

This is a business-to-business planned maintenance contract. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 do not apply to it. You confirm that you are entering into it in the course of a business.

The contract is made up of, in order of precedence where they conflict:

1. The Contract Schedule — your site list, asset register, visit frequency, SLA tier, agreed price and any site-specific variations.
2. These Contract Terms and Conditions.
3. The Site Survey Report on which the price was based.

Nothing on our website, in a brochure or in a quotation forms part of the contract unless it is written into the Schedule. Your own purchase order terms do not apply.

What goes on a commercial contract

Any of the following, regardless of the type of building:

• Any VRV/VRF system.
• Refrigeration, process cooling, chillers, close-control and server-room cooling, where explicitly named in the Schedule.
• Multi-site portfolios, and any site with a compliance, trading-hours or response-time requirement.
• Any system in statutory F-Gas leak-check scope that you want us to manage records for.
• Systems with five or more indoor units where you want them on a maintenance plan — our domestic AC Essential and AC Complete plans stop at four indoor units in total.

Systems with four or fewer indoor units at a domestic or small commercial premises may instead be covered by our AC Essential or AC Complete care plans, under separate terms. A larger system can always be serviced as a one-off job under those same domestic terms without any contract at all — the five-unit boundary applies to plans, not to a single service visit.

2. The survey, and how your price is built

• Every contract is priced from a free site survey. We do not price a commercial contract from a phone call, and we do not publish a rate card, because the price of a four-unit café running fourteen hours a day has almost nothing in common with a four-unit office.
• The survey produces an asset register — every indoor and outdoor unit, make, model, refrigerant type, nameplate charge and CO₂-equivalent. That register is attached to the Schedule and is what the contract covers.
• Once agreed, your price is fixed for the contract year, subject only to the variation and price review provisions below.

What drives the price, in order of weight

1. Number of indoor units.
2. Visit frequency — annually for light office use; twice yearly for retail, hospitality and kitchen environments.
3. Access — height, roof, permits, out-of-trading-hours working.
4. Whether systems fall within statutory F-Gas leak-check scope, and at what frequency.
5. Any out-of-hours requirement.
6. The response SLA tier you select.

3. Contract term, renewal and price review

• The initial term is 12 months from the commencement date in the Schedule, unless a longer term is stated.
• The contract renews automatically for successive 12-month periods unless either party gives 60 days' written notice before the end of the then-current term.
• We will issue the renewal price at least 75 days before the renewal date, so you always have the price in hand before your notice period expires.
• Annual price review. At renewal we may increase the contract price by the greater of 3% or the annual percentage increase in the Consumer Prices Index (CPIH) published for the month three months before the renewal date. Any increase above that requires your agreement, and you may terminate at renewal if you do not accept it.
• We may adjust the price mid-term only where the Schedule changes under section 11, or where a change in law materially changes the cost of performing the contract — most obviously a change in F-Gas obligations or refrigerant availability.

4. Payment terms

• The contract price is payable monthly by Direct Debit, or annually in advance by bank transfer, as stated in the Schedule.
• Reactive work, parts, refrigerant and anything outside the contract scope is invoiced separately on completion.
• Invoices are payable within 14 days of the invoice date. Time for payment is of the essence.
• All sums are exclusive of VAT.
• Late payment. We may charge statutory interest and fixed compensation on overdue sums under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. Interest runs at 8% above the Bank of England base rate in force on the preceding 30 June or 31 December, whichever is the more recent, fixed for the six months that follow, and accrues daily from the due date until payment. Fixed compensation is also payable per overdue invoice at the statutory rate — currently £40 on debts under £1,000, £70 from £1,000 to £9,999.99, and £100 at £10,000 and above — together with our reasonable costs of recovering the debt.
• Suspension. Where any invoice is more than 30 days overdue we may, on 7 days' written notice, suspend all services including SLA response, planned visits and F-Gas leak checks, until the account is cleared. Statutory F-Gas obligations remain yours throughout any suspension — see section 6.
• You may not withhold or set off any sum against an invoice without our written agreement.
• Where you require a purchase order number on our invoices, you must supply it at the start of the contract year. An absent PO number is not a reason to delay payment.

5. What the contract includes

• Scheduled planned maintenance visits at the frequency in the Schedule, matched to how hard the site runs.
• Every indoor and outdoor unit on the asset register inspected, cleaned and recorded individually — not a sample. Filters, coils, fans, grilles, condensate drains, electrical connections, controls and performance.
• Electronic leak detection across accessible pipework, joints, valves and coils on every visit, plus performance verified by temperature split — see the note below.
• F-Gas leak checks at the statutory frequency for each system in scope, calculated from its CO₂-equivalent charge.
• Equipment records maintained on your behalf — refrigerant type and charge, work carried out, gas added or recovered, with a copy left with you on each visit and the master record held by us.
• Priority SLA response at the tier in the Schedule — see section 7.
• Discounted repairs and parts at the contract rate in the Schedule, across all units on the register.
• Visits scheduled around your trading hours, including evenings and weekends where that is agreed and priced in the Schedule at the outset. Where out-of-hours working is built into your contract price, it is not charged again per visit.
• A written report before we leave site, so you can budget rather than be surprised.
• Guidance on whether your systems require a TM44 inspection, and help arranging one — see section 12.

6. F-Gas: your duties and ours

Within that, we will:

• Calculate the CO₂-equivalent charge of each system on the register and tell you the statutory leak-check frequency that follows from it.
• Carry out leak checks at that frequency and record them.
• Maintain equipment records containing the information the Regulations require, and give you a copy after each visit.
• Where a leak is found, repair it or quote for its repair, and carry out the required follow-up check within one month of the repair.
• Use only F-Gas certified engineers for any work involving refrigerant, and hold the company certification the Regulations require.

Statutory leak-check frequencies, for reference, are based on charge expressed as CO₂ equivalent:

System charge (CO2e)	Minimum check frequency	With automatic leak detection fitted
5 tonnes or more	Every 12 months	Every 24 months
50 tonnes or more	Every 6 months	Every 12 months
500 tonnes or more	Every 3 months	Every 6 months — detection system mandatory

Hermetically sealed systems below 10 tonnes CO₂e and labelled as such are outside the leak-check requirement. Where the Schedule places a system outside F-Gas scope, that is stated on the asset register, and it is your responsibility to tell us if the equipment changes.

You must tell us promptly of any refrigerant work carried out on the equipment by anyone other than us, so the records stay accurate. We are not responsible for gaps in a record caused by work we were not told about.

7. Response times and the SLA

Response time is measured from the moment you report a fault to us by phone or email, and means an engineer attending site — not an acknowledgement, and not a fix. Your tier is stated in the Schedule and is separately priced.

Tier	Within 25 miles of NG22	Beyond 25 miles	Cover
Standard	2 working days	3 working days	Working hours
Enhanced	Next working day	2 working days	Working hours
Critical	Within 4 hours	By agreement, site by site	7 days, incl. out of hours

• Standard and Enhanced run during working hours only — 08:00–17:00, Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays. A fault reported after 15:00 is treated as reported at the start of the next working day.
• Critical runs continuously, seven days a week, including evenings, weekends and bank holidays. The working-hours clock and the 15:00 cut-off do not apply to it — that is what the tier premium buys.
• Critical is only offered where the site is within a distance we can genuinely serve. We will decline the tier rather than promise it and miss.
• Where we miss a response time other than for a reason in section 16 (force majeure) or a failure of site access, the reactive attendance for that call is provided at no charge. That is the remedy; it is not a service credit against the contract price and does not accumulate.

8. Reactive attendance, repairs and parts

• Attendance in response to a reported fault is charged at the contract labour rate in your Schedule. The domestic £89 / £69 call-out rates do not apply to commercial contracts.
• Where the Schedule includes a number of reactive attendances within the contract price, they are stated there. Attendances beyond that number are chargeable.
• No repair is carried out without a priced acceptance from you, other than where you have set a standing authorisation limit in the Schedule, in which case we may proceed up to that value without a separate order.
• Parts are charged at cost plus the margin stated in the Schedule, less your contract discount.
• Refrigerant is charged at cost plus margin on every occasion. It is never included in the contract price, and the contract discount does not apply to it.
• Our workmanship on a completed repair is guaranteed for 12 months. Parts carry the manufacturer's warranty, passed through to you.
• Leak repair guarantee. Where we repair a leak, we guarantee that repair for 12 months. If the same joint or component leaks again in that period we return and re-repair at no charge for labour or attendance, and supply the replacement refrigerant at cost with no margin. The guarantee does not extend to a new leak elsewhere in the system, to a component we quoted for and you declined to replace, or to a system where the leak could not be located and we said so in writing at the time.

9. What the contract excludes

The following are outside every Multi & Commercial Care contract and are chargeable or refused:

• Parts and repair labour — discounted at your contract rate, never free.
• Refrigerant in any quantity, including gas added during a leak repair.
• The TM44 inspection itself — see section 12.
• End-of-life decommissioning and refrigerant recovery — documented and quoted as a separate job.
• Access equipment — towers, MEWPs, scaffold, roof access permits and any associated hire, charged at cost plus 15% unless the Schedule prices it in.
• Units or plant added mid-term without a contract variation under section 11.
• Chillers, refrigeration and process cooling unless explicitly named on the asset register.
• Work on R22 systems beyond inspection, reporting and advice. Virgin R22 is banned.
• Rectifying defective installation work carried out by others, free of charge. It is reported and quoted.
• Damage from misuse, power surge, flood, fire, vermin, blocked or obstructed plant, or alterations by you or a third party.
• Electrical work upstream of the isolator, and all builders' work — ceilings, boxing, plastering, decoration, drainage runs.
• Out-of-hours attendance that is not priced into the Schedule.
• Legal advice on your operator duties. We give general guidance based on our F-Gas experience. It is not legal advice and you should not rely on it as such.
• Replacement of plant that has reached the end of its economic life. We will tell you when we believe that point has arrived and quote for replacement.

10. Site access, safety and your obligations

You will:

• Give safe, unobstructed access to all plant on the asset register at the scheduled times, including any keys, permits, escorts or inductions needed.
• Tell us of any site-specific safety rules, asbestos register entries, permit-to-work requirements or restricted areas before the first visit.
• Keep plant rooms and outdoor units clear of storage, vegetation and obstruction.
• Provide, free of charge, safe access to power, water and welfare facilities where reasonably required.
• Nominate a single point of contact authorised to accept quotations and sign off work.
• Tell us promptly about faults rather than continuing to run failing plant.
• Tell us about any refrigerant work carried out by others, and about any change to the plant on the register.

Where a scheduled visit cannot go ahead because access is not available, we will reschedule it and may charge an abortive visit fee at the contract labour rate for the time lost, including travel. Where access has failed twice on the same visit, the visit may be treated as delivered for the purposes of the contract year.

We may stop work and leave site where we consider conditions unsafe, where a permit or isolation is not available, or where our engineers are subjected to abuse. We will tell you why in writing the same day.

11. Variations — adding, removing and changing plant

• The contract covers the plant on the asset register attached to the Schedule, and nothing else. Plant not on the register is not maintained, not leak-checked, and not covered by the SLA.
• To add plant mid-term, we issue a contract variation confirming the revised annual price, charged pro-rata for the remainder of the contract year. Additions take effect only once the variation is agreed in writing.
• Removing plant — decommissioned, replaced or a site vacated — likewise requires a variation. We will reduce the price pro-rata from the date of the variation, but not retrospectively, and the minimum contract value in section 2 continues to apply.
• Where a site is added, the price is set from a survey of that site, not by extrapolating from an existing one.
• Where we discover on site that the plant differs materially from the register — most commonly more indoor units than were declared — we will maintain what is on the register and issue a variation for the rest. We will not silently absorb it.

12. TM44 energy inspections

Air conditioning systems with an effective rated output over 12kW must be inspected at least every five years by an accredited energy assessor, with the report lodged on the national register. That obligation is yours as the building operator, and it is enforced separately from F-Gas.

• We will tell you whether we believe your systems fall in scope, based on what we see on site, and help you arrange an inspection.
• We do not carry out the TM44 inspection itself, and it is not included in the contract price. It requires an accredited assessor and lodgement on the register.
• Our guidance is general and practical. It is not a compliance certification and does not discharge your obligation.

13. Liability and insurance

• We hold public liability insurance of £5,000,000, employers' liability insurance of £10,000,000 and professional indemnity insurance of £1,000,000. Certificates are available on request and will be provided at contract start.
• Nothing in this contract limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.
• Subject to that, neither party is liable to the other for: loss of profit, loss of revenue, loss of business or contracts, loss of anticipated savings, business interruption, loss of stock or product, loss of goodwill, or any indirect or consequential loss, however arising.
• Subject to the above, our total liability arising under or in connection with this contract in any contract year is limited to the greater of £25,000 or 125% of the annual contract price for that year.
• We are not liable for loss arising from: a fault or defect we identified in writing and you chose not to have repaired; plant not on the asset register; alterations or refrigerant work carried out by others; the failure of plant that has reached the end of its economic life where we have told you so; or your failure to meet your own statutory duties as operator.
• You are responsible for insuring your own plant, stock and business interruption risk. This contract is a maintenance contract, not an insurance policy and not a warranty against breakdown.
• Any claim must be notified to us in writing within 12 months of the date you became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the circumstances giving rise to it.

14. Termination and suspension

• Either party may terminate at the end of a contract term by giving the notice in section 3.
• Either party may terminate immediately on written notice where the other is in material breach and has not remedied it within 30 days of written notice, or where the other becomes insolvent, enters administration or liquidation, or has a receiver appointed.
• We may terminate immediately where a site is or becomes unsafe and you decline to make it safe, or where plant is beyond economic repair and you decline both repair and replacement.
• Early termination by you. Where you terminate mid-term other than for our material breach, the balance of the contract year is payable, less a credit for any planned visits not yet delivered, valued pro-rata against the annual price. Where you have paid annually in advance, the same calculation determines the refund.
• On termination: all outstanding invoices become immediately due; we will hand over the equipment records we hold on your behalf within 28 days, in a usable electronic format, at no charge; and any provision intended to survive termination does so, including liability, confidentiality and payment.
• Suspension for non-payment is dealt with in section 4. Suspension does not extend the contract term, and visits missed during a suspension are not credited.

15. Confidentiality, data protection and records

• Each party will keep confidential the other's non-public commercial information and use it only for the purposes of the contract. This does not apply to information that is or becomes public through no fault of the recipient, or that must be disclosed by law or to a regulator.
• Each party will comply with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Where we process personal data on your behalf — typically site contact details — we do so only on your instructions and with appropriate security measures. Our Privacy Policy sets out how we handle personal data generally.
• We retain equipment and F-Gas records for at least 5 years from the date of the entry, and service reports for the same period. Copies are available to you on request at any time during the contract and for 12 months after it ends.
• Where a regulator, enforcement body or your insurer asks us for records relating to your equipment, we will tell you before we provide them unless the law requires otherwise.

16. General

• Subcontracting. We may use suitably qualified and certified subcontractors and remain fully responsible for their work. You may not assign the contract without our written consent, which will not be unreasonably withheld.
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for a failure to perform caused by an event outside its reasonable control, including severe weather, industrial action, utility or telecoms failure, and interruption to the supply of refrigerant or parts. The affected party will tell the other promptly and take reasonable steps to mitigate. Where the event continues for more than 60 days, either party may terminate the affected part of the contract.
• Non-solicitation. Neither party will, during the contract and for 6 months afterwards, knowingly solicit or employ any employee of the other who has been materially involved in the contract, without written consent. This does not restrict responses to a general public advertisement.
• Entire agreement. The contract documents in section 1 are the whole agreement between us and replace anything said or written beforehand. Neither party relies on any statement not set out in them. Nothing in this clause limits liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Variation. No change to these terms is effective unless it is in writing and signed by both parties.
• Waiver. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver of it.
• Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest continues in force.
• Third parties. No one other than the parties has any right to enforce the contract under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
• Notices. Written notices are given by email to the addresses in the Schedule, or by post to the registered offices, and take effect on delivery or, for email sent during working hours, on sending.
• Governing law and jurisdiction. This contract and any dispute arising out of it, including non-contractual disputes, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

17. Rate card summary

Contract-specific rates are in your Schedule and take precedence. This summarises the standing positions in these terms.

Item	Position
Site survey	Free, and required before any contract
Minimum annual contract value	£395 + VAT
Contract term	12 months, auto-renewing
Notice to prevent renewal	60 days
Renewal price issued	75 days before renewal
Annual price review cap	Greater of 3% or CPIH
Invoice payment terms	14 days from invoice date
Late payment interest	8% above BoE base (statutory)
Suspension threshold	30 days overdue, on 7 days' notice
Labour rate, reactive attendance	Per Schedule — not the domestic £89/£69
Parts	Cost + margin, less contract discount
Refrigerant	Cost + margin, no discount, always chargeable
Access equipment hire	Cost + 15%
Workmanship guarantee	12 months
Leak repair guarantee	12 months on the repaired joint
Liability cap	Greater of £25,000 or 125% of annual price
Record retention	At least 5 years

Contact

ArcticNord — hello@arcticnord.co.uk · 0333 090 7546 · Unit 10 Brailwood Close, Bilsthorpe, Newark, Nottinghamshire, NG22 8UG.