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Routine repairs services cannot be resumed ‘overnight’, housing association bosses warn

Housing associations across the country have warned that routine repairs cannot instantly resume at normal rates after the housing minister wrote directly to social housing tenants to announce the return of non-urgent works.

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Several housing association chief executives have told Inside Housing that it will still take time to return to full repairs capacity due to pressures, including furloughed staff and social distancing measures.

The warnings come after housing minister Christopher Pincher was sent to all social housing tenants in England, which said planned maintenance work should continue. Inside Housing understands that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local government also expects routine maintenance work to resume where capacity allows.

Previous government guidance issued in March urged landlords to fix or inspect only “serious and urgent issues” and take a “pragmatic, common sense” approach to non-urgent repairs

Geeta Nanda, chief executive of 57,000-home Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, told Inside Housing: “We are still working towards routine repairs, it’s not going to be an overnight process because we still need to get the system up and running.”

Ms Nanda noted that the association, which operates in London, the South East, East Midlands and East of England, had furloughed staff within its in-house repairs team and some of them will need to be unfurloughed before repairs can return to normal.

Commenting on Mr Pincher’s letter, Nigel Wilson, chief executive of 29,000-home Gentoo, said that while the intention was good, the association would like to have had a heads up in an ideal world.

“We want to get back to a normal service when it’s safe to do so,” he said.


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Mr Wilson believes that is now important to communicate clearly with tenants what is possible and what the limitations will be.

“Some people will interpret the letter as meaning that all repairs can be done tomorrow but that is not the case, so it’s about managing expectations,” he explained.

As a result of the government advice back in March, the majority of associations switched to a repairs-only operation. This has resulted in a major repairs backlog, with many of these delayed jobs to be prioritised when normal service resumes.

Ms Nanda said the repairs backlog would be prioritised and it was important that this was communicated to residents and work could be carried out safely.

Mark Washer, chief executive of 58,000-home Sovereign, said the association had 14,000 repairs in the pipeline when the country went into lockdown in March and that it has been planning for a return for weeks but stressed that it will take time to return to full capacity.

“There will still be tenants who are shielding and self-isolating, so we can’t suddenly flick a switch and find ourselves with normal services resumed,” he said.

Brian Cronin, chief executive of 28,000-home Your Housing Group, also said it would take weeks before his association could return to normal service. He said: “We are rolling it out over the next three to four weeks because you can’t just hit the ground running, but we are slowly introducing things on a phased basis.”

However, despite lockdown measures being loosened and new government advice around repairs, there are still concerns over the safety of the operatives.

Keith Simpson, chair of the Direct Works Forum, which represents associations and councils that deliver their own repairs and maintenance works, argued that it was too early to return to routine repairs.

He said: “This is not the time to pretend that COVID-19 has gone away – we are no different this week than we were last week. There is little need to do general repairs unless you have got absolute control over PPE [personal protective equipment].”

Construction giant Kier, which has maintenance contracts with several housing associations, said it was planning a “phased approach” for its return to work, which is to be done in line with Public Health England guidance and the Construction Leadership Council’s site operating procedures.

Catherine Ryder, director of policy and research at the National Housing Federation, said: “We know the sector is working hard to get repairs and maintenance services up and running again, but adapting to new circumstances and working through backlogs that have built up over the past eight weeks of lockdown will take some time.”