Could we deliver repairs differently?
At the moment social landlords up and down the country are struggling to get their repairs completed: whether they have an in-house team, external contractors or a mix of both. Many organisations are experiencing a backlog of repairs and as a consequence an increase in disrepair claims. The situation is unlikely to improve in the short term. The shortage of skilled labour post Brexit, the impact of the pandemic, escalating material costs and the reliance that many of the larger contractors have on sub- contractors has created a perfect storm of service failure. What is the solution? Indeed is there a solution?
There are a number of factors at play and resolving the current challenge must include a focus on building long term skilled capacity. This means recruiting staff, increasing apprentices, opening up training, creating more college capacity and so on. All of this resource challenge is coming at a time when the sector needs to start thinking seriously about how it can meet the move to net zero carbon homes. Given that we cannot complete day to day repairs, how are we going to build a new green industry (potentially 300,000 plus jobs) to deliver on our green commitments?
However, there is a parallel question: is this emerging crisis simply hiding a flawed delivery model for repairs? What does this mean? At the centre of social housing repairs delivery is the principle of carrying out all repairs based on different priorities each with set timelines. This puts huge pressure on the landlord and contractor(s) in terms of organising resources to meet deadlines. Why do we do it this way? Meeting these timelines creates a delivery pressure that, particularly at the moment, is often impossible to meet.
What if instead of categorising repairs around emergency, urgent and non urgent we moved to something where only emergencies were delivered on an appointment basis and everything else happened around estate, street or neighbourhood repair days. This would mean allocating multi skilled teams on set and well publicised days to undertake all of those non-emergency jobs; alongside an accessible and flexible booking system for residents, thereby allowing the most effective planning of works.
‘Repair days’ would be organised in line with demand – some estates or areas might require more regular visits but there would be a baseline bi-monthly visit. The days could become ‘events’ with other related housing management services also being present. This approach would raise the profile of repairs in a positive way.
There is also something about estates having similar issues due to construction age and type. Indeed, is there an opportunity, as part of this process, to research common issues and, perhaps with resident and TRA involvement, develop broad solutions to issues such as failed drainage or condensation.
Clearly, part of this change, must be close control over the definition and application of an emergency to stop ‘old hands’ shortcutting the process. At the same time, it will be important to understand how to support those who find it difficult to access repairs call centres and appointment making, but who just ‘put up’ with things until they become emergencies.
We also need to recognise, more generally, that emergencies have become part of the delivery problem. The number of jobs categorised as such is undermining the service for many landlords and sorting out the call centre/customer contact to better define inbound calls and what is and isn’t an emergency must be a priority. This needs fixing under any future solution – thoughts for another day!
The idea will take the day to day pressure off the delivery of repairs. It will allow non emergency work to be planned, will help join up repairs with other housing services and should give residents a more reliable and predictable service. Anyone ready to give it a go?