14 Jun 2024
Rethinking repairs and maintenance as if people mattered
Tpas are tenant engagement experts. What on earth do we have to do with repairs and maintenance? Well, why wouldn’t we get involved with repairs and maintenance? We all know it’s a massive priority for tenants and a big focus for engagement. For this very reason we have maintenance contractors as members. But like pretty much every aspect of housing, it turns out that a great repairs and maintenance service is actually all about people. So it’s definitely our sort of thing.
I’m pleased that Tpas have been very closely involved in CIH and NHF’s Rethinking Repairs and Maintenance group, and I’m delighted with the project’s outputs. With hindsight, the project could have been called Repairs and Maintenance as if People Mattered (this is a reference to E.F Schumaker’s ground breaking Small is Beautiful), because the project’s twelve guiding principles are all about people.
The guidance talks a lot about tenants, which is just really refreshing in a report about repairs and maintenance. It highlights a variety of ways tenants can and should be involved, including the importance of informing new tenants about their rights and how to report a repair, to maximising involved tenants and how they can best be supported to fulfil their valuable scrutiny role. It includes the tenants you never hear from, who may be vulnerable and could offer an important perspective on your service delivery, alongside tenants in all their varieties and complexity, whose needs must be met by your services. The report also advocates for making sure they can get involved with your engagement structures and how to build the trust that is so fundamental to effective scrutiny.
It’s not just a matter of skilled and effective specialist staff (important though they are). There are structural requirements around how you organise procurement and recognise tenants’ priorities in your performance measurement, how you record tenant data and analyse your performance to understand whether your services are fair, and how you ensure your services are genuinely open to scrutiny.
The guidance is packed with examples of organisations that have got this right, even while emphasising that success won’t just be a case of copying best practice. It must reflect local circumstances and local priorities because it’s only by understanding the people you’re serving that you can serve them successfully. Contractors and landlord staff feature prominently, of course, but not just surveyors and repairs operatives. The report recognises that every point of contact matters, to make sure landlords understand their tenants and their needs, whether their needs are being met and to make sure their repairs are up to date.
In fact, the guiding principles are strong on working across barriers and on collaboration between teams. So, maintenance operatives looking out for signs of vulnerability, and housing officers trained to spot signs of damp or disrepair. They’re also about empathy, and empowerment in response to tenants’ needs. It just doesn’t make sense to tenants (or to me!) that you can have a plumber in the kitchen fixing a tap, but they’re not authorised to tackle a problem with the WC while they’re there.
The report’s twelve recommendations are grouped into six themes, and the idea is for landlords and tenants to work through them in order and consider where they can improve. It’s great the report recognises that improving cultures and behaviours is fundamental to success and makes this the first theme.
Since the Grenfell fire social housing has been exposed to the full glare of national media, and it’s not been a pretty picture. Time and again, I’ve been gobsmacked to think that anyone would believe it was ok to leave someone’s home in the state revealed by the latest expose, and I’ve wondered where the humanity has gone. It’s my fervent hope that the guiding principles outlined in this report are widely adopted and bring the humanity back to repairs and maintenance.
And for anyone needing an extra incentive to check it out, the principles are closely aligned with the Regulator of Social Housing’s consumer standards, so they’ll also help you through an inspection.
Jenny is chief executive of Tpas.
