Repairs and Maintenance 360 Scrutiny Review 1. Introduction 1.1 London Borough of Ealing own or manage around 18,000 properties. The stock is a mixture of housing and low and high rise flats, ranging in style from Edwardian street properties, through interwar sheltered estates and high rise blocks to modern medium rise flats. The Repairs & Maintenance team, which is part of the Landlord Services section in the Regeneration and Housing department, manages the repairs and maintenance, capital investment, health and safety, compliance, planned maintenance services to all of leasehold and tenanted stock in the borough. 1.2 The key services provided by the Repairs and Maintenance team include: Ensuring a high quality maintenance service for the Council s housing stock. Ensuring that health and safety compliance is achieved for the Council s housing stock. Ensuring the Council s housing stock is maintained to the decent homes standard through a programme of reactive and planned works. Maintenance of temporary and hostel accommodation and sheltered housing schemes. The Repairs and Maintenance team is divided into 6 business delivery teams: Responsive Repairs this team manage the responsive repairs service through a number of term maintenance contracts and carries out inspections and provides technical advice. Voids & Disrepair this team are responsible for carry out refurbishment works in empty properties and re-letting the units. The team also manage disrepair cases, structural repairs and major repairs, as well as carrying out inspections and providing technical advice. Mechanical and Electrical this team manage the M&E term maintenance contracts and ensure compliance with all statutory Health and Safety legislation. The team also carry out inspections and provide technical advice. Ealing Repairs Service (ERS) this team provide an in-house handyperson maintenance service to the Council s housing stock. They operate within a hybrid maintenance delivery model. The Council s pest control team were recently merged with this team. Resident Involvement this team lead on resident involvement within the Housing Department. Client Support this team provides back office support to the technical teams. 1.3 The other teams in the Landlord Services department are: Housing Management this team are responsible for ensuring that tenant s abide by the obligations of their Tenancy Agreement. Rents - the team are responsible for collecting rent and chasing arrears.
Estate Services this team are responsible for cleaning communal areas, managing refuse collections and supervising grass cutting and tree pruning on the Council s estates. Home Ownership this team manage leaseholders, set and collect service charges for leaseholders and deal with Right to Buy applications. The corporate Customer Services Centre provides the Repairs and Maintenance team s call handling service for repairs and pest control through a service level agreement. 2. Repairs Monitoring and Benchmarking 2.1 The performance of the Repairs and Maintenance service is monitored at operational and corporate levels. Operationally, a weekly meeting is held to monitor several key performance indicators across the responsive maintenance service. Key operational Council staff meet the Term Maintenance Contractors together to review performance and agree on actions to improve underperformance and continuous improvement. Operational managers hold monthly performance review meetings with all of the Term Maintenance contractors individually. On a quarterly basis, key stakeholders are invited to these meetings. 2.2 Corporately, the service is monitored at the monthly Queen of the South meeting, which includes senior Council staff and the Leader of the Council. The Service Director or Head attends this meeting and provides feedback on underperformance and issues of concern. The service is also monitored at the monthly Corporate Directors management meeting. 2.3 To ensure we are aware of our performance compared with other providers, we use benchmarking clubs, such as Housing Quality Network (HQN) and Housemark. We use HQN to predominantly to keep abreast of good practice and to benchmark service specific items, i.e. share policy and procedures, that may are not part of benchmarking programmes. Housemark is a national benchmarking club which benchmarks performance information quarterly and we annually submit cost information which provides an annual report comparing us with our peers, (landlords with similar size stock). Attached to this report are some benchmarking examples. 3. Scrutiny 3.1 The Council s stock is well maintained and, with the exception of a small number of individual properties and regeneration estates, meets the decent homes standard. The challenge is to continue to meet high standards, while making the most of the opportunities that HRA reform has presented. We engage Ealing Council residents in monitoring, scrutinising and developing the repairs and maintenance service. We give residents the tools to not only investigate performance but deliver performance reports to decision makers and senior staff. Our model for resident scrutiny was developed as part of the re-tendering process for the retendering process for the repairs and maintenance contracts, initially in 2010 and then again in 2013. Over 2000 residents took part in developing Local Standards for the new contracts, with the repairs and maintenance panel forming the selection committee and working on the contracts specification.
20 Local Standards, devised by residents, then formed part of the contracts performance framework, with failure to meet standards being penalised with defect and subsequent default notices. In as many cases as possible we have aimed to tie local standards to contracts. 3.2 Ealing Council Housing Forum The Housing Forum is an advisory body for tenants and Leaseholders of the London Borough of Ealing. The perception of residents, their aspirations and priorities for services, such as repairs, are the drivers behind the Forum. The group enables real scrutiny and accountability of the department and its services and ultimately supports tenant led self-regulation. The initial aim of the Ealing Council Housing Forum was to complement and enhance the performance of the Regeneration and Housing function during and after re-integration of Ealing Homes in April 2011. The Forum continues to monitor the performance of the department through tenant led reality checks and larger pieces of scrutiny work. The Housing Forum works with the council s Management Team, Officers and Stakeholders and is given access to detailed performance information. 3.3 Resident Repairs Scrutiny Panel Every year residents carry out over 250 individual pieces of investigation work, looking into the quality of service fellow residents have received. Panel members scrutinise a batch of 60 jobs per quarter (30 per East/West of the borough) through telephone interviews with tenants in receipt of repairs. Their results are inputted using an online mechanism, which provides immediate reports to the council. Scrutineers receive training and expenses to carry out their work. They meet regularly with Senior Council staff to feedback tenant perception and to make recommendations for service improvement. 4. Resident Association Engagement 4.1 On estates and neighbourhoods across the borough residents have formed Resident Associations and Community Groups to provide a shared voice for their tenants and leaseholders. These associations meet regularly with repairs staff, attend estate inspections and highlight issues that need repairing. There are nearly 40 resident and community associations actively engaged with the council. The Chair of each association will meet with the Ealing Repairs Service to carry out estate walkabouts. At these walkabouts communal repairs will be identified and a log will be generated. This log will be fed back to association members at their next general meeting and progress monitored. Resident and Community Associations provide the council with a direct line of communication with residents on estates. They provide first-hand knowledge of issues that can be tackled by the service and hold the team to account.
4.2 Case Study High Lane Resident Association The High Lane Resident Association in Hanwell has worked constructively with the council and the repairs department for over 12 years. Recently the association became concerned about antisocial behaviour and disrepair in an unused bike shelter under a block. Repairs contractors carried out site visits with association members where a scope of work was agreed. The work was then carried out to secure the shelter with a steel access gate fitted to the doorway. The Association were invited to a post work inspection where they were able to sign off the job. 4.3 Case Study Walnut Court Resident Association The Walnut Court Resident Association approached the Ealing Repairs Service to assist them with their preparations for Christmas in 2014. The Ealing Repairs Service visited the scheme and helped the residents wire their Christmas lights to a large fir tree in the communal garden. 5. Contract Management 5.1 The present responsive maintenance contracts have been in place since September 2013. Currently, three contractors two external SME contractors and an in-house team provide the service. Residents report repairs to the Council s call centre and the team raise orders to the contractors through an IT interface. Separate contracts are in place to manage the repair element of the re-letting process. One contractor manages the casual voids and another manages the expensive voids and extension work. Several contractors provide the Mechanical and Electrical servicing and repairs provision. There is one contractor who is responsible for all domestic and commercial boiler installations, whilst other contractors manage the electrical works, communal aerial systems, door entry systems, emergency lighting, lightening conductors, water tanks, lifts and smoke detectors. Each contract is managed through monthly contract review meetings, which monitor budget spend, performance indicators, complaints, resident satisfaction, health and safety performance, training and operational issues. These meetings are supplemented by weekly surveyor and fortnightly operational meetings. Since last October, the three responsive maintenance contractors and key officers have also monitored the key performance indicators through weekly dynamic performance meetings. 6. Estate Management 6.1 In addition to regular visits from surveyors and contractors on estates to monitor and carry out responsive repairs and the caretakers daily or regular cleaning visits, there are a number of other key management tools used to monitor the repairs and maintenance on the Council s estates. 6.2 Estate Inspections Ealing Repairs Service are responsible for organising and carrying out regular inspect inspections on all of the Council s estates. The larger estates are visited every quarter and smaller estates are visited on a 6 monthly or annual basis.
The inspection programme is published annually for the following year and circulated to key internal and external stakeholders. The Ward Councillor, Resident Association Chair, Tenancy Management Officer, Contract Surveyor and Senior Caretaker are invited to each estate inspection. The inspection date is published on the estate notice boards, so that residents can take part in the inspection if they want. The Ealing Repair Supervisor will make a note of all the repairs and issued identified on the inspection. The Supervisor will raise works orders for the works and circulate the estate report, with the works order details, to all of the key stakeholders. The Senior Caretaker is responsible for publishing the report on the estate noticeboards. 6.3 Planned Maintenance Programmes The Repairs and Maintenance team are developing preventable, planned and cyclical redecoration programmes of work on all of the Council s estates. Preventable programmes of work will include gutter clearances, flat roof repairs and drain jetting. Planned programmes of work will be linked with Resident s Estate Improvement works and will include large or expensive repairs which can be tendered to achieve cheaper prices or need to be carried out in a planned manner. The Council are introducing a cyclical decoration programme of works to redecorate the external and communal areas of all blocks on estates. This programme will be extended in due course to individual blocks and street properties. 7. Health and Safety of Buildings 7.1 The Council s buildings are subject to a number of Health and Safety checks and regulations to ensure that residents are protected and the asset maintained. The following Health and Safety checks are carried out to the communal areas: Fire Risk Assessments every 1-3 years, depending on the risk priority. Stock condition surveys every 10-15 years. Asbestos surveys when suspected. Legionella testing annually to communal water systems. Fire Alarms quarterly. Emergency Lighting quarterly. Lifts quarterly. Communal Boilers quarterly. Electrical supplies every 5 years. Dry Risers quarterly. Estate Inspections quarterly. Accident Investigations for each incident or near miss. Playground Equipment annually, but arrangements are being put in place for more frequent inspections.
8. Vulnerability 8.1 The Repairs and Maintenance service may carry repairs quicker or repairs that would normally be the resident s responsibility if the resident is classed as vulnerable. Broadly, a resident may be classed as vulnerable due to age very old or very young, or disability mental or physical. Providing that evidence is provided to confirm the vulnerability, the Council will take this into account when ordering or carrying out work. 9. Repairs Benchmarking 9.1 To ensure we are aware of our performance compared with other providers, we use benchmarking clubs, such as Housing Quality Network (HQN) and Housemark. We use HQN to predominantly to keep abreast of good practice and to benchmark service specific items, i.e. share policy and procedures, that may are not part of benchmarking programmes. Housemark is a national benchmarking club which benchmarks performance information quarterly and we annually submit cost information which provides an annual report comparing us with our peers, (landlords with similar size stock). 10. Key Repairs Statistics 10.1 We provide a repairs and maintenance service to about 12,700 tenants and 5,000 leaseholders and our annual budget is 14.29m. In 2014/15 we: completed 36,000 repairs undertook 11,000 annual gas servicing visits answered 100,000 telephone calls and 12,000 e mails reserviced 1,000 empty properties received and responded to 470 complaints. installed 600 replacement boilers at a cost of 1,484,450.41. 11. The Housing Revenue Account (HRA) repairs budget 11.1 The key budget areas are: Empty properties - 1,600,000 Ealing Repairs Service (ERS) - 508,000 Cyclical and planned maintenance - 5,210,000 Responsive repairs - 5,105,000 12. Ealing Council s Repairs & Adaptations Service 12.1 Last year the Aids and Adaptations team carried out: 117 adaptations to Council properties at cost of 961,201 219 adaptations to Private properties at cost of 1,814,810 The average cost per adaptation was 8287, down from 9,281 last year.
The Handyperson service carried out 2181 jobs 12.2 The Handyperson Plus service carried out the following repairs: Hospital Release 57 Sensory alarms - 23 Disabled equipment repairs - 149 Essential equipment (boilers, etc) - 123 Major repairs 50 Overall Customer satisfaction with the service was 98%, 13. Key Issues and challenges 13.1 Demand Management project The Council commissioned consultants Impower to carry out a review of demand management on 4 key Council service areas. One of those service areas was the housing repairs service. The project identified a number of issues related to the demand for this service and how it may reduce or more effectively meet genuine need. The trials tested interventions designed to reduce unnecessary demand and cost in housing repairs using behavioural change techniques. These trials within housing repairs were designed to address issues related to avoidable contact with the call centre, tenants not providing access to contractors to carry out repairs, the high number of repairs generated by a small number of tenants, the ratio of emergency vs routine/urgent repairs and the level of tenant recharge actually recovered. Taken as a whole, the trials have successfully delivered measurable changes in behaviour, and financial benefits, from relatively cheap interventions. The have now been scaled up and implemented into business as usual. In many cases, the trial has outperformed the original target. 13.2 Lean review The Lean review of Responsive Repairs service started in February and ended in June. The implementation plan has now begun and is expected to be rolled out over the next 3 months. The aim of the review was to deliver rapid improvement to the end-to-end performance of our Responsive Repairs service and to establish a foundation to maintain and improve it further in the future. The general approach is to reduce waste in the process and create capacity in the team and then deliver improvement as quickly as possible. To enable us to understand where we were, identify steps that need to be redesigned and to build a longer term plan, we held several interviews, workshops and review & implementation exercises with key stakeholders and representatives of teams who are involved in Responsive Repairs process. This review was being carried out by Ad Esse Consultants with the participation of two internal Lean Champions.
13.3 Policy and procedure review The majority of Repairs and Maintenance policies and procedures were out of date and have been reviewed and refreshed over the last year in consultation with a number of key stakeholders. The two key documents for tenants the Tenancy Agreement and Repairs Handbook are also being updated, now that the policies and procedures have been reviewed. 13.4 Austerity measures The Council is going through its 2 nd round of austerity measures. Landlord Services has largely been unaffected by these measures are its income comes from rents and service charges. However, there is pressure on the Housing Revenue Account, because some services traditionally funded from the General Fund, which could not continue to be funded, have been have been retained with funding from the HRA, providing that the service is linked to Housing Management. Landlord Services have contributed to the austerity measures by making budget cuts through efficiency savings. The Repairs and Maintenance budget has been cut by 6% and a restructure of the team has resulted in a leaner structure. 13.5 Welfare reform The recent introduction of the Benefit Cap and the imminent roll out of Universal Credit has the potential to reduce rental income, as tenants struggle to either bridge the Benefit Cap or manage their lump sum benefit payments. Officers have drawn up plans to offer support to tenants affected by the changes, which should minimise rent loss. 13.6 Health and Safety management Health and Safety legislation and compliance is becoming increasingly onerous for Social Housing providers. Landlord Services and the Repairs and Maintenance team in particular are managing an increasingly complex Health and Safety regime. A review of the Health and Safety management system was carried out last year and the action plan is currently being implemented. The Repairs and Maintenance team are taking responsibility for all Health and Safety compliance, so in addition to the current key areas of gas, electricity, water, lifts and asbestos, fire safety is being transferred to the team. The team are under pressure to have robust processes, monitoring and resources in place to ensure compliance. 14. Appendices 14.1 Year to date Queen of the Suburbs report 14.2 Performance Framework for Repairs Scrutiny 14.3 Example of contractor monthly meeting agenda and minutes 14.4 Satisfaction survey questionnaire 14.5 Estate inspection programme 2015/16 14.6 Repairs Benchmarking Feedback
14.7 Breakdown of jobs by trade 14.8 Year to date budget report