A tenant is warning people to be on their guard after five men claiming to be boiler engineers entered his house after his partner let them in.

The resident, who did not wish to be named, said it happened last Wednesday when he was out at work but his partner was at their home in Quartz Way, Sittingbourne.

She called him at around 11am saying she was concerned because the buzzer for their flat had been pressed a number of times but she could not see anyone in the surveillance camera pointed over the main entrance door.

A short time later she left the flat to go to the nearby shops, and when she returned she found five men standing in the block’s communal hallway.

They approached her and said they were engineers and were trying to fix a fault with a boiler downstairs, asking to take a look at her property’s heating system.

Her partner said: “She showed them in to our place and into our boiler cupboard. When she told me that I said, ‘why on earth did you let them in?’

“They weren’t wearing any official ID badges or uniforms.

“When she let them in they were more interested in looking around the flat than they were at the boiler.

“It seemed like they were in scouting the place out” - victim's partner

“It seemed like they were in scouting the place out.”

After leaving, she called her partner who contacted their landlord and building manager, both of whom said they had sent nobody to the property to carry out maintenance work.

Four of the men are described as white – two in their late teens or early 20s, one in his 30s and the other aged over 50 – while the other male was black and in his late 30s or early 40s.

Police confirmed the matter had been reported to them.

A spokesman said: “An appointment has been made for an officer to visit the location.”