Issue - items at meetings - Progress on Decent Homes Standard work including the new repairs system

Report from the Acting Director of Housing Management

37.1    Nick Hibberd, Assistant Director Housing Management and Glyn Huelin, Partnering and Performance Manager, presented a report on the six month review of the Mears repairs and maintenance contract and addressed members' questions.

37.2    Members asked for more information about the nature of complaints that had been received about the service. They heard from Mr Huelin that about 50% of complaints were about planned works including their scheduling and the other half were about the repairs being carried out including the quality of work that had been done.

Following analysis of the complaints, the team had endeavoured to provide more information to the residents about how work had been scheduled over the three year period and the reason for this. This had led to improved customer satisfaction.

Members heard that 90 complaints had been received over a six month period. This should be seen in the context of over 14000 repairs jobs being carried out over the same period and indicated complaints had been received about approximately 0.006% of the works being carried out.

One of the unanticipated problems that had been encountered was with the Repairs service working hard to catch up with the backlog of repairs. When the operatives went to the property, they might find a number of other unanticipated repairs that needed to be carried out in order to bring the property up to decent homes standard. This had an impact on the scheduling of other works.

37.3    Members asked whether residents were involved in making decisions about how their kitchens would be designed. Mr Hibberd explained that tenants’ representatives were involved at a strategic level although individual residents would not be involved at the strategic stage. However when it came to an individual property, the tenant was involved with the design. At the same time the design needs to take account of the layout of the room and the requirement to meet the Decent Homes standard.

37.4    Members said that they had received feedback from some residents that they had felt some pressure from Mears operatives to have an earlier than agreed appointment. Mears would always make an appointment but operatives were also encouraged to use their time as practically as possible and if they were near a property, they might call the resident unexpectedly to see if they could do the work. Some residents felt under pressure to admit operatives when they were not expecting them.

Mr Hibberd said that he would take this information back to Mears so that they could work with their staff to avoid inadvertently pressurising residents. Members also heard that Mears was training all of its operatives to reach NVQ level 2 in customer service.

37.5    In response to a query about the Apprentice scheme that was in operation, members heard that there were currently six apprentices with plans for nine more to come. The six currently employed were from Whitehawk, with plans to take people from other areas of Brighton and Hove, including Portslade, in the future. Apprenticeships were not restricted to young people, they would be open to all .Apprentices were given the opportunity to use empty council properties in their training.

37.6    Mr Hibberd and Mr Huelin were thanked for their report.