We know from the results of our last two STAR surveys, and from other feedback, that our repairs and maintenance services are extremely important to tenants. We’ve listened to tenants and over the last eight months, we’ve been working to reduce our backlog of overdue routine repairs.
We’ve provided regular updates on our progress along the way, which you can read by clicking on the following links below:
Where did the repairs backlog come from?
We saw a 15% increase in repair requests in 2022 and a 15% rise again in 2023. Whilst this was expected following the lifting of restrictions on routine repairs during the COVID-19 pandemic, we didn’t expect to see a similar number of repairs requests being reported again in 2023.
Due to this increase in demand, by November 2023, we were only managing to complete 55% of our routine repairs within their target time. This fell short of our target of 80%. We put in place a plan to reduce the number of overdue repairs.
Our work so far
- Some of our team worked overtime to schedule the routine repairs that were outside our target times.
- We recruited additional customer support team members to take repairs calls and support with managing our repairs mailbox.
- We recruited two more colleagues into our M Team (internal trade team).
- We redeployed our colleagues in our major works team to support with some of the more complex routine repairs.
- We formed a specialist team to deal with the increasing damp and mould issues being reported to us.
- In January 2024, we worked with Ian Williams Contractors, who supported us to complete a number of our overdue routine repairs.
- We grouped repairs jobs together wherever possible, to allow us to carry out most repairs within tenant’s homes during one appointment.
- We introduced a callback system on our phones so that tenants didn’t have to spend time holding in a call queue.
- We improved the functionality of our tenant app, to include the ability to report repairs and let us know when repair appointments are most convenient for tenants. We aimed to respond to all of the repairs raised through our app within 48 working hours.
- We offered evening and weekend appointments for tenants who couldn’t accommodate a routine repair during the week.
- We completed the commitments we made to tenants in our homes and estates group by delivering our repairs improvement plan.
Results to date
Our partnership with Ian Williams Contractors lasted just under four months. During this time, the Ian Williams team completed 207 overdue repairs jobs. This took our completed number of repairs carried out within our routine repair target time from 55% to 69%. This gave us a great foundation to build on. With continued hard work and dedication from our internal team, we are pleased to report that we are now meeting, and often exceeding our target of 80%. For the three-month period of March 2024 to May 2024, we completed over 85% of routine repairs within their target time.
What about our other repairs?
We were already achieving our target times for both our emergency and urgent repairs. However, you can see from the graphs below that for the three-month period of March 2024 – May 2024, we have exceeded our target time for urgent repairs, with 96% being completed within target.
We would like to thank all of our tenants for their patience and understanding during this time and apologise again for any inconvenience caused.