Tenants, Housing Residents & Leaseholders conference shines a light on council housing

The interactive conference held at Southampton’s Novotel hotel was also live streamed so that participants could join in from the comfort of home. Around 100 tenants and leaseholders attended both in person and online, with everyone being invited to take part in polls and surveys throughout the evening.

Although the event covered many aspects of the Housing Service with presentations ranging from allocations to tenant training opportunities, the main focus was on your homes – including how we repair and maintain properties, what we are doing to speed up repairs and where we will be investing next year.

Looking after around 18,000 properties is a huge undertaking and our multi-million pound repairs and maintenance budget includes:

• £7 million on mechanical and electrical safety – which covers conducting annual gas and five-yearly electrical tests, rewiring homes, installing new boilers and heating systems, and ensuring our properties are compliant
• £15 million on contracts and commercial services – which covers major maintenance projects like replacing kitchens and bathrooms, structural works, insulation, fire safety and disabled adaptations
• £7 million on providing a 24/7 responsive repair and maintenance service to around 18,000 homes. On average we carry out around 55,000 repairs each year
• £4 million turning empty homes (called voids) around to relet to new tenants
• £7.5 million on materials, plant and equipment needed to carry out the works listed above. We employ our own team of trade staff and also manage a multi-million contract with Travis Perkins

Despite a multi-million pound budget, the service faces ongoing challenges to maintain homes and meet the increasing amount of repair requests (many of these turning into reactive planned replacements), resulting in increased pressure on the service, longer timescales, a backlog of repair jobs, and a sharp rise in the number of complaints.

However, as explained at the conference we are adapting and working to meet these challenges in several ways. We are stepping up our Decent Homes investment in this financial year to ensure more homes meet the standard of being in a reasonable state of repair, with modern facilities and thermal comfort. We have appointed Trident Ltd as an additional contractor to help increase delivery, which will mean we can install 1,068 new kitchens and bathrooms, 1,176 boilers, 540 new windows and 444 new roofs.

As well as investing £25 million in capital works to improve homes over the next five years, we have also put aside a dedicated budget of £1.4 million to tackle damp and mould issues. Together these investments will all help to bring more properties up to Decent Homes standard and reduce the number of ad hoc repairs needed.  

We know how important a fast and efficient repairs service is to residents, so we are increasing staff numbers, appointing a further additional contractor and redeploying trades from other teams to increase delivery and clear backlogs.

We have already improved logistics to make sure the service runs more efficiently to reduce delays and speed up turnaround times. By working to ensure vans have the correct materials on board and increasing availability across the city, we can guarantee more jobs will be completed right first time so reducing inconvenience for residents. We are also working closely with the Tenant Repair group to listen to feedback and suggestions, and ensure we learn lessons from customer complaints.

This is just a snapshot of what was discussed at the conference. If you missed the event and would like to find out more, you can read all of the presentations online and check out our next issue for an in depth look at Tenant Engagement including how we’re increasing opportunities for you to get involved, have your say and hold us to account.