How can providers access skills to clear their work backlogs?

The lack of skilled tradespeople is one problem, but many around the table also highlight the impact of office-based skill shortages. Too few project managers mean that schemes don’t run as smoothly as predicted. Surveyors are needed in ever greater numbers to meet the needs of increased regulation such as Awaab’s Law, requiring them to identify and address damp and mould issues. And those with data skills can help housing associations understand their homes and operations more effectively. 

Even where organisations have been able to recruit, many then struggle to retain skilled people. This can be especially frustrating when they have invested in training.

Apprentices and upskilling

Brighton & Hove City Council currently has 27 apprentices. Geof Gage, head of housing investment and asset management at the council, says that retaining them post-training is a constant challenge, especially for trades such as electricians and plumbers, who can command better pay elsewhere.

“Being a local authority, our salaries are slightly lower than anywhere else,” he says. “That’s a big issue for us – retaining people on those. And particularly in the market as it is now, we’re finding that not only for our trades, but also for surveyors etc.”

Andrew Rysdale, assistant director of property at Fairhive Homes, says his organisation has had some success with retention, with staff turnover currently around 6%. He advocates looking at the package beyond salaries, including benefits and pensions, as well as listening to operatives. “It used to be quite a big ‘them and us’. It was the office team, and it was the operatives. So, we’ve really fought hard to make one team within property,” he says.

This has involved things like team-building exercises that bring together staff that don’t usually see each other, plus spotting those that want to progress and offering opportunities to do so.

Mr Gallaugher has followed a similar approach at Abri. “If we’ve got a gas engineer, we can train them up to be a plumber. It’s a bit of a no-brainer for us,” he says. “They generally don’t want to be doing all plumbing. They don’t want to be doing all gas engineering, but they do have quite good synergies.”

He describes this as a win-win for employees and employer: trades get a greater variety of work and a higher salary, while Abri has more skills to meet its resource planning needs.

“One of the reasons I think we’re always so supportive of apprenticeships is that we can develop that workforce in our model,” says Kirk Braker, head of repairs and maintenance at Colchester Borough Homes. Tradespeople who start their careers in social housing, he explains, have much more experience of the resident safeguarding and customer service skills than peers who have worked only on building sites. And it’s for this reason that the sector should work extra hard to retain them, he says.

Even with skilled people in place, making a dent on backlogs can still pose issues with planning. Carly Glover, head of operations at Repair My Home, says: “It can be a challenge in terms of cross-workstream working – it’s difficult to simply deploy resources between planned and voids into responsive repairs, where there is individual preference.”

But housing providers are finding smart ways to reduce the backlog of work in progress.

Doing so makes sense, says Francis Burrows, executive director of customer and operational services at Wandle Housing Association, since long backlogs affect customer satisfaction and erode trust. At Wandle, residents sit on a customer repairs group, which helps the landlord to tackle problems in a resident-centric way. This involves “having a group of people talking about what their current experience is like, and using their ideas to help feed in”.

“They can also then help come up with all sorts of different approaches, which will be quite different to what we will come up with,” he says. “It’s about getting that customer voice into the repairs service.”

Mr Rysdale points to another example from Fairhive Homes where smart, targeted investments in people are yielding tangible results for residents. To ease the workload on the company’s single voids and repairs manager, Fairhive has split the role, giving two people the space to tackle voids and repairs separately.

“Having that capacity has made a real difference,” says Mr Rysdale. “We’ve had to invest in it, but we’re now being able to see the outcomes.”

Working with suppliers

While many housing associations have internal resources to cover some of their repairs and maintenance needs, almost all have relationships with suppliers – either to meet capacity or to fulfil certain specialist needs.

Those around the table agree that the nature of those partnerships could – and perhaps should – change, but the issue is complex.