Repairs and Maintenance to your home
2019/20 saw the launch of our new Repairs Strategy, which we developed in partnership with colleagues and customers.
Customer satisfaction is our main priority and we want to make sure that our in-house repairs service is continually delivering an excellent service to customers. Our overall satisfaction scores for the repairs we carried out achieved a final year-end result of 9/10 from feedback across 3663 customer responses.
Fixing a repair first time is also a priority to ensure repairs are resolved swiftly and there’s minimal inconvenience for customers. To support this priority, we have provided training and support to our colleagues to help them identify and diagnose repairs when first reported, resulting in 89% of repairs being genuinely fixed first time.
In recognition of our approach to repairs and maintenance, we successfully won the Repairs and Maintenance Team of the Year 2020 at the Housing Heroes Awards, demonstrating the service we provide is recognised as delivering the excellent service customers expect.
Supporting job creation and training, our repairs and maintenance service continued to deliver an apprenticeship programme in 2019/20, recruiting 10 apprentices across a range of trades.
We also launched the Ian Hamill training programme, a lasting legacy to a much-loved Great Places colleague. In 2011, Ian Hamill sadly passed away following a road traffic accident on his way home from work at our Head Office in Manchester. Ian had worked at Great Places for just over 14 years and was our Group Head of Property Services at the time. He was a highly regarded and well-loved colleague who was heavily involved in supporting colleagues to grow and further develop their careers – especially our trade apprentices.
Ian was so passionate about supporting young people that following his death, Ian's wife left a generous legacy donation to Great Places to help future trade apprentices to establish a career within the Repairs Team.
The money will be used to fund 10 trade apprentices (one per year) over the next 10 years, all of who we would like to live in one of our communities or homes. All 10 salaries will be sponsored by the fund as well as extra initiatives to support our apprentices to complete their qualifications. In addition to this, all trade apprentices will receive a toolkit in recognition of successfully passing their probation, to ensure they have the best possible tools and equipment to do the right things in the right way and get them right first time.
