When your plumbing packs up or the boiler breaks down, you want it repaired, and you don't want to sit at home for days hoping the person carrying out the repair will turn up. But if you're a tenant of a housing association or a council, there's still a good chance you'll have to wait in for that knock at the door.
That 38% of social housing providers fail to operate an appointment service is one of many uncomfortable findings of a new report into their maintenance performance (page 7). And the comprehensive research into 250 providers reveals that the shortfalls are not only in the outcome to tenants, but the general way in which organisations run their departments.

Too much cash is being wasted, for example, because housing providers are storing up trouble with inadequately planned maintenance, leading inevitably to expensive emergency repairs.

This seems to be more prevalent in housing associations, which might have something to do with the fact that there is no separate maintenance grant to help meet any repair backlog.

The shortfalls are not only in the outcome to tenants but in the general way departments are run

What the report doesn't do, though, is answer the question "why?" – probably because the causes are well-known. As well as the shortage of cash, there's a dearth of know-how and some providers feel hamstrung when trying to demand higher standards from what is largely a suppliers' market. Also, perhaps, even though some won't want to admit it, there is a failure to make repair and maintenance a top priority – despite every tenant survey saying time and time again that good repair and maintenance service is top of residents' wish lists from any landlord.

The good news is that the list of organisations that have managed to turn round their repair operations is growing. The stragglers need to learn from the leaders. Certainly there is more improvement to be made in partnering, with contractors being reminded that it is a two-way process. It's time, too, to reassess the role of direct-labour organisations. The survey puts the private contractors and direct-service organisations on a par both in cost and performance. One might imagine that in-house maintenance arms would be cheaper because they don't have to turn in a profit, says the report. But they have employment costs, too. On the upside, the results suggest that the days when direct labour organisations were considered inefficient and second-rate are over.

Source

Housing Today