Providing repairs services throughout the pandemic

Providing repairs services throughout the pandemic

Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic our Repairs team continued to deliver repairs, health and safety-related checks and services across our many homes and schemes. These challenges included managing a backlog of over 1600 repairs that were in our system throughout the lockdown periods and coping with a reduced workforce because of high colleague absences due to Coronavirus or through isolation. Naturally, we also experienced difficulty from time to time in accessing customers’ homes to do repairs too. Our partner organisations and contractors also experienced their own issues due to the pandemic, in particular their supply chain and ability to locate parts, which then impacted on our ability to resolve some issues customers may have experienced. We appreciate your patience through this time.

We worked hard to improve our digital experience for both customers and colleagues and in June 2021 we launched our new repairs scheduling technology – aimed at providing a more efficient and effective service for our customers by reducing travel time through smart route planning.

We have also recently commenced a review of our empty homes process in 2021 to ensure the repairs carried out to our empty homes, going forward, meet customer needs and improve the quality and standard of the homes we provide.

The efforts of our repairs teams in 2020/2021 were recognised in our customer satisfaction score of 8.9 out of 10.