Agenda item

The Cabinet Member for Housing presented the report which concerned the progress made following the internal repairs service audit report that had been received in April 2024.  The report stated that the Council could take partial assurance that the controls to manage this area were suitably designed, consistently applied or effective.   The report identified actions that were required to strengthen the control framework.

Members were referred to Appendix 1 of the report which outlined the progress made against the audit actions.  This appendix was presented to the Governance and Audit Committee at the meeting on 27 November 2024.

There was a total of 13 actions with two advisory actions.  Ten of the actions were complete with one action due to be completed by 31 March 2025.  The other actions concerned a new post and upgrades to IT systems which were due to be completed by 31 March 2025.

It was stated that significant progress had been made with the introduction of a new interim staffing structure as detailed at Section 4 of the report.   The new structure included replacing the single Repairs and Voids Manager role with two managers, one to look after voids and one to look after repairs to allow the development of expertise in each area and provide greater resilience within the staffing structure.    The introduction of separate managers had created capacity for the new Damp and Mould team which would be included within the Repairs team.

Performance reporting had been significantly strengthened since the audit and new Key Performance Indicators had been created together with reports within the new QL repairs system which allowed weekly and monthly performance reporting.  Extracts from the reporting system were shown within the report at Section 5.   Section 6 of the report detailed the Repairs Service Improvement Plans and the actions that had been completed to date and those actions planned for Q4 2024/25.  Section 7 covered the weekly reporting of repairs which had been introduced in November 2024 to monitor the progress of the improvement plans.  A snapshot of jobs was included in the report.  It was proposed that the item become a regular item on the agenda and the Committee was asked for a timeframe of either three or six months.

A discussion on the report followed with Members noting the progress made to date.  The Cabinet Member for Housing stated that going forward it was proposed that local contractors within the four main towns would be approached to see if they could undertake small local repairs. A question was asked in respect of new and old repairs to which the Head of Service (Technical Services) responded.  A further question was asked about who made the call in respect of simple or complex repairs and it was stated that this was done in the Repairs centre with an example given of a complex repair which required different contractors to attend.  More discussion followed in respect of Damp and Mould to which the Head of Service (Technical Services) replied.  It was proposed that a report would come before the Committee every three months going forward.

ØAction

That the Committee received an update report on the Repairs Service every three months.