20 Sept 2023
Key learnings from our webinar on repairs and maintenance in Ireland
Missed our recent webinar on how housing providers in Ireland can improve their repairs and maintenance offer? Get all the main takeaways here.
Housing associations, local authorities, and private property providers in Ireland manage a diverse range of portfolios, all facing numerous repairs and maintenance challenges. Earlier this month, we held a virtual event looking at what housing providers in Ireland can do to deliver a more effective repairs and maintenance service – for the benefit of their organisations and their tenants.
The session was hosted by Roslyn Molloy, head of policy and practice at the Housing Agency.
The speakers were:
- Ciaran Andrews, deputy head of housing, Respond
- Aine McGaley, chief operations officer, Tuath Housing
- Donough O’Higgins, property services manager, Oaklee Housing
- Stewart McClean, asset manager, Radius Housing.
Here are the key learnings from the webinar.
Understand your stock
Understanding your stock and knowing what’s on your asset register is “a simple one, but it’s quite an important one”, as Ciaran Andrews, deputy head of housing at Respond, put it.
Aside from knowing the composition and condition of your stock, as well as other assets such as commercial premises, it’s crucial to know who owns what, as parts of some buildings could be owned by other people or organisations; and who is responsible for maintenance, as it could be a third party.
As pointed out by Ciaran, other things to consider are the:
- Legislative and health-and-safety requirements
- Number of bedrooms in each home
- Estimated build year of the property
- Component structure and hierarchy.
Ciaran said that, while fully understanding its stock and assets is particularly important for Respond, as it now has nearly 8,000 homes under management, knowing and understanding stock is something even small providers do.
Credit: Respond
Establish a robust stock survey process
Naturally, to ascertain much of this information and to begin to put together an idea of what kind of repairs and maintenance work you need to carry out, you will need to conduct a survey of your stock. But what’s the best way to do this?
Oaklee Housing surveys 20 per cent of its stock each year over a five-year period, with the goal of completing a survey for all its stock by the end of the five years. This also provides a starting point for each five-year planned-works programme and its 30-year lifecycle of overall stock.
Their surveyors are requested whenever they’re on site to highlight immediately any non-compliance or health and safety issues present within stock. Data also plays a role in the overall monitoring process, with Oaklee carrying out data-validation checks to minimise the impact of human error and to ensure consistency and accuracy.
Meanwhile, Respond’s Ciaran Andrews points out that, for older stock, it’s important to conduct a stock-condition on a more regular basis. This will help you “to understand if those lifecycles are still current and making sure that you can produce the lifecycle plans and 30-year investment plans”.
Engage with your tenants and gather feedback
A key aspect of engaging with your tenants is ensuring you gain feedback that you can use and act on going forward. Once Oaklee completes a repairs job, for example, they send out seven questions to the tenant, which include:
- ‘Overall, how would you rate the delivery of the project by Oaklee?’
- ‘How satisfied were you with the contractor?’
According to Donough, the questions enabled Oaklee to ascertain a satisfaction rate of 95 per cent or higher, something he believes has resulted in a boost in morale within the organisation’s repairs and maintenance teams and an improved relationship with contractors.
Radius Housing, meanwhile, has committed to a programme of in-person engagements with tenants. So far, the provider has completed 15 service improvement groups, 14 tenant panel meetings, and 144 estate walkabouts.
According to Stewart McClean, this has resulted in a better connection and understanding with tenants, a greater sense of trust, and improved problem-solving. The key to realising these benefits, he said, is to “get the right staff involved” - for example, those who are experts in a specific contract or area of work.
Credit: Radius
Use data to improve your service
A point keenly pushed by all speakers was the importance of effectively utilising data. Tuath Housing’s Aine McGaley said that, by consistently listening to tenant feedback, analysing trends, and adapting, Tuath can ensure repairs remain efficient, effective, and aligned with tenant needs.
“The best thing about the data,” said Aine, “is being able to look at how we can continually improve the service offer...to be able to say, this is what the journey is telling us, how can we improve this, and how can we make this better?”
Oaklee’s Donough O’Higgins highlighted the need to collect data for a specific purpose, saying: “If we’re collecting data and it’s not being used, then it has no purpose, and we have to ask ourselves, do we really need it in order to function effectively as an organisation?”
Donough added that:
- Data collated needs to be easily understood
- It’s important not to lose sight of why you are collating specific data
- There needs to be a clear understanding of how the data is to be assessed.
Going forward
There are many ingredients that are needed to deliver an effective repairs and maintenance service for tenants – from gathering and acting on feedback to ensuring you have a good understanding of the composition and condition of your stock.
As Aine pointed out, though, it’s important to not lose sight of the bigger picture. She said: “It’s really important that we take this opportunity to remind ourselves that what creates an effective service is that we’re giving people homes, and it’s our residents’ needs that are being met.”
Liam Turner is the CIH's digital editor.
