UK's biggest survey of maintenance performance finds landlords failing government targets
Social Housing providers are failing government targets for the repair and maintenance of their stock.

A new report, the UK's most in-depth study of housing repairs services, has found poor performance on planned maintenance, failure to draw up repairs programmes and bad relationships with contractors.

The research will come as a wake-up call for housing organisations because maintenance is their biggest cost. On average, they spend about £1000 per property per year.

Housing performance specialists Housemark and Checkmate carried out the landmark study, entitled Housing Repairs and Maintenance – From Benchmarking to Good Practice and obtained by Housing Today.

Both organisations carried out in-depth analysis of repairs cost and performance records for more than 250 local authorities and housing associations over the past three years.

The research, due for release on 15 July at the National Housing Federation's Development and Maintenance Conference at Warwick University, covers cost and performance of repairs in greater detail than conventional Audit Commission inspections. It found that:

  • almost all of the organisations studied had failed to put in place planned maintenance and modernisation programmes of sufficient scale to meet housing inspectorate good-practice targets that no more than 30% of repairs should be emergency or urgent

  • administrative costs for urgent repairs run at 34% on top of contractors' fees, compared to 12% for routine work. This means repair bills could be cut by increasing planned work

  • about 38% of housing organisations do not make appointments with tenants setting out the time at which repairs will be carried out, despite strong recommendations from the Audit Commission and demand from tenants

  • many organisations with third-party contractors are going through the motions of partnering. In contrast, organisations with direct service organisations show greater co-operation between the "client" and "contractor" sides.

    Figures showing that the average housing organisation carries out almost as many urgent repairs (36%) as planned responsive repairs (38%) will cause particular concern. Also, the average amount of emergency work carried out by housing organisations is more than twice that recommended by the Audit Commission.

    Paul Edwards, director of performance audit at Housemark, said: " The message to the regulators and government is that there is still a way to go in what is a key area."

    Differences between councils and associations were marginal, added Edwards, although it was found that associations complete more of their repairs within target – by as much as 10% in some cases.

    However, the administration cost of responsive repairs is higher for housing associations than local authorities. On average, district councils spend about half (£60) the amount housing associations do on the administration of each responsive repair.

    The average direct service organisation was found to break even, and was found to be no more expensive for housing organisations than hiring third-party contractors.

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    Housing Today