Agenda item

Check in on Southwark repairs service performance

To receive an update from Christine Bramman, Head of Repairs & Maintenance, Housing and Modernisation on Southwark repairs service performance.

Minutes:

The commission then received a report from Christine Bramman, Head of Repairs & Maintenance, Housing and Modernisation and David Hodgson, Director of Asset Management on Southwark repairs service performance.

 

Christine addressed the commission on the following points

 

·  Both areas of North and South within the service needing an improvement plan, with the South service outsourced to Morrison till 2018 after which it was in house

·  Effect of the pandemic led to rigorous risk assessments and emergency repairs being carried out, ageing workforce caused issues with vulnerable staff not being able to do site visits and young apprentices having great difficulty due to lack of mentoring normally done by pairing up with senior staff

·  Most of the pandemic back log has now been cleared except for maybe 100 standard repairs to be done and of those are mainly bigger jobs like re-plastering

·  Areas of internal repair service cover basic plumbing, carpentry, electrical and wet trades within people’s homes, separate arrangements exist for common repairs, roofing etc.

·  Improvement plan to have a new vision for the service where it aspires to be excellent for residents, fit for purpose, providing safe and well maintained homes and buildings

·  Aiming to invest in people and actively manage the people that provide the service to ensure they have the right skill sets, customer care skills, technical skills etc.

·  Challenges faced first due to Brexit and then the pandemic with supply chain shortages, material shortages, labour shortages generally across the construction industry

·  Substantial work streams in the budget, procured a new works management system, new technology, more customer friendly and this will give staff access to track works and assign resources accordingly, this new system is to be completely rolled out by the end of the financial year

·  SMS texting service and online chat service for residents about the work and operative updates with options to query and provide feedback

·  Biggest challenges faced are in upskilling and multiskilling staff in operations and a corporate resolution for telematics tracking of operatives which we can turn on in our vehicles.

 

Christine and David them answered the commission questions on the following topics

 

·  Statistics on resident satisfaction with repairs and appointment completions

·  Operative performance and incentivising criteria

 

Resident satisfaction surveys were stopped during the pandemic as most of the customer experience staff were moved to responding frontline repairs requests inbox. Surveys were restarted in November 2021, however the metrics and analysis for the survey, include external heating contractors and are outsourced to another organisation. Operative pay was finalised as the first rate pool last year and have a generous salary scheme compared to our peers, incentives are on acceptable levels of productivity of operatives.

 

The commission agreed that the overall metrics of the resident satisfaction survey including external heating contractors will be helpful to the work of the commission and it would be included in the agenda papers for the next meeting

 

The commission then discussed around the following themes

 

·  Contact centre management, instantaneous resident feedback and quality of repairs

·  Working with TMOs to provide better repairs service

Supporting documents: