Issue - meetings

To receive the report of Martin Greenway, Head of Repairs & Estate Services.

RECEIVED the report of Martin Greenway, Head of Repairs & Estate Services.

NOTED

1.    Key points of the report were highlighted by Councillor George Savva, Cabinet Member for Social Housing.

2.    Members were invited to raise questions and comments.

3.    In response to Members’ questions regarding the introduction of the service, Officers explained that the service was launched in May 2020. In arriving at this decision, Cabinet considered the wider feedback from service users which included residents wanting to register their repair to polite, helpful staff who could diagnose their problems accurately and a book a convenient appointment slot with minimum customer effort. There was also a need to achieve a higher rate of ‘first time fix’ as well as communicating better to satisfactorily resolve repair issues including improving the handling of escalations and complaint casework.

4.    Officers provided an overview of the Repairs Team outlining how functions are organised. The structure is predicated on maximising efficiency so there are several functions brought together or share common resources.

5.    Regarding the establishment of the Housing Resolution Centre officers explained that one of the key drivers of creating a dedicated Contact Centre for Housing repairs was to improve the customer journey and have the process from ‘telephone to screwdriver’ all in one team. As agreed in the plan a Housing Resolution Centre was established in January 2022.

6.    In response to Members’ concerns regarding the efficiency of contractors, officers advised that the service fields 80,000 calls per annum resulting in 49,000 repair orders being raised. (30,000 of which pass through Enfield Repairs Direct (ERD)). The service is based at Edmonton Green and co-located with technical staff and staff from other teams in Housing to develop more of a joined-up approach. Core repair services are still in-house meaning that there is still a need to rely on external specialist contractors where there’s not a business case to take in-house (e.g. a roofing repair).

7.    The department is in the process of procuring new contractors which will provide the ability to consolidate what is already in place. However, it is currently a very difficult market as material and labour costs continue to increase therefore companies are not coming forward with tenders. Therefore, as many repairs as possible are being covered in-house with the skills available and external contractors are only used for very specialised jobs.

8.    Officers went on to say that the in-house repairs operation is of critical importance to the future success of the service as having to over-rely on contractors has been a problem in the past. Instead the vision is to create a dedicated in-house workforce with trained and knowledgeable tradespeople, with apprenticeship programmes and succession planning. The benefit of an in-house service is that there is greater control and accountability for the standard of work. A training programme has been agreed which will enable staff to work safely, understand the systems used and to receive further trade skill training.

9.    To improve the quality of service provided to customers  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4