Responsive Maintenanceservice Improvement Panel

Responsive MaintenanceService Improvement Panel

Meeting Notes

Thursday 5th September 2013

Present: Jean Haynes (JH), Annette Bellyou (AB), Clare Waters (CW), Tina Williams (TW), Christine Rowe (CR), Sheila Bullock (SB), Rose Wright (RW), Geoff Brookes (GB), Mike Slater (MS), Lee Harrison (LH – Quality Surveyor),Richard Kettrick (RK - Kier Stoke Customer Experience Co-Ordinator),Shaun Osborn (SO – Kier Stoke Responsive Repairs Manager), Katie Smithson (KS – Customer Service Team Leader – Repairs), Emma Mawson (EM – Kier Customer Experience Co-ordinator), Kate Thorley (KT – Kier Stoke Resource Controller), Mark Bourne (MB – Tenant & Leaseholder Involvement Officer)

Apologies:Emma Fear (EF – Acting Senior Housing Manager)

Raised by / Details
MB
TW
KS
GB
MB
CW
MB
RW
GB
AB
KT
CR
AB
TW
LH
TW
CR
LH
SO
LH
KS
RK
SO
LH
AB
LH
MB
LH
GB
LH
RW
KS
SO
GB
SO
SO
TW
SO
TW
LH
LH
TW
SO
TW
AB
MS
SO/RK
LH
AB
KS
GB
LH
SO
CR
AB
CR
GB
MB
GB
SO
AB
LH
AB / 1 – Minutes & Matters Arising
P1 - Re CW’s issue – said that Anika Basford has confirmed that the gas test carried out in October was solely for the installation of a new boiler and was not a full landlord’s certificate. A full landlord’s certificate was issued at the end of May 2012 and the next one was completed at the end of April 2013.
P1 – some tenants are still not aware of the change of phone number for the repairs line.
Replied that every tenant has had notification via their rent statement; information has also been placed in all local centres and one stop shops, and there is still a message on the 0844 number for people who call it.
P1 – asked re progress with the contract review.
Replied that he will chase this up.
Asked re Data Protection training for members.
Said that this is being arranged and we will notify all members as soon as possible.
P2 – re security lights – said that she has spoken to LH and he is now looking at including Middleport in the scheme as early as possible due to ASB problems being experienced.
P2 – re calling tenants for late appointments – asked if AB had spoken to Tony Phillips about this.
Said that she had not.
Said that we are looking to put a system in place; currently the resource controllers are very busy between 8 and 9 am but then have a lull; we are looking to rearrange dates and times where we know we will not be able to keep an appointment. We are also looking at a system to identify problem slots or very late appointments.
Said that during the call-round exercise on Friday a lot of tenants said that they downgraded the score as the workman was late for the appointment, and most said that they would have preferred to be notified if the operative was going to be late.
Said that whilst we do need to collect accurate failure demand to improve the service; however we need to balance this against the customer’s needs. We have a lot of evidence saying that tenants want to be called if we know we will be late for their appointment, so we should be looking at ways of delivering this service.
P3 – asked re the recruitment of extra staff.
Said that we have appointed a temporary Quality Surveyor; he is very experienced and has settled in well. We will not be appointing any more as the other candidates did not meet the necessary requirements.
Re the call-round exercise – said that lots of people said that they weren’t asked for a score.
Said that she found this was the case too; said that she would have liked to have a script to follow as it was her first time on this kind of exercise.
Replied that he will create a script for future use.
Re action RM006 – said that training sessions have been greatly reduced over the summer holiday period and therefore we have not had the capacity to invite members. We will be starting to hold more sessions over the next 6 to 8 weeks.
2 – Performance
Went through the PIT & Kier performance information. We think that the drop in %age of appointments met within 30 minutes, and the increase in calls received, is due to the change of phone number to a local rate line.
Gave the following info re the call centre:
July 2013 / Aug 2013
Calls received / 6035 / 7018
Calls abandoned / 226 / 334
%age calls abandoned / 3.7% / 4.7%
Average calls per day / 262 / 304
Average wait / 28 secs / 52 secs
Average in-call time / 3:21 / 3:32
Went through the Kier performance report re complaints and compensation claims. Said that the trends here followed the trends already identified by LH and KS.
Said that voids activity has increased due to the Welfare Reform Act, and this is having a knock-on effect on responsive performance. Regarding calling tenants for late appointments, there are so many factors that affect this on a daily basis.
Asked how the panel would feel if call handlers were to use the information available to negotiate a suitable time with tenants, enabling us to guide more tenants to pick times where we know we are more likely to have operatives available?
Said that there could be off-shoots from this due to the many influences on the system.
Said that we can to some extent predict certain trends in demand; last year we had extra on-call operatives ready to respond to burst pipes and we also ran a media campaign to show measures that tenants could take to prevent burst pipes during the winter months.
Suggested that call handlers or resource controllers could record the numbers of calls made to tenants to rearrange appointments or notify tenants of late appointments; this would provide a guide to how much failure demand was being affected.
Said that the system cannot record outbound calls; this would mean call handlers logging all outbound calls on paper; there would then be a lot of work involved in collating this info and fitting it into the necessary reports.
Said that RW had previously had 4 visits to fix a boiler issue. Asked what the rate of return visits is overall for all repairs reported.
Replied that he did not have this information to hand.
Asked, if the job wasn’t fixed until the 4th visit, who pays for the first 3 visits?
Said that these would be booked as failures on the system and we would only pay for the first visit.
3 – Responsive Maintenance Update
Said that Kier have now acquired their own drain jetting vehicle and training for using this will take place next Friday. Kier are continuing with training and up skilling operatives. We have also recruited 12 new operatives for voids work and increased the level of supervision due to the extra work as a result of the Welfare Reform Act. The MEWP is still working well and we are looking at a tetra-ladder system to reduce the cost of working at heights.
Asked how much money has been saved by using the MEWP
Replied that as of 2 months ago, figures showed that the MEWP had saved in the region of £57,000 since we first procured it.
We are still making improvements to the standard van stock; one of the knock on effects of our efforts to reduce roll-over tasks is the greater need for early morning deliveries.
Asked if operatives are allowed to return to stores to collect their own stock if we know that they will be waiting a long time for materials to be delivered.
Replied that we do allow this and we are being more pro-active to identify instances where it would be better for the operative to return to the stores themselves rather than wait for deliveries.
Said that something that had come up from the call-round exercise on Friday is that some operatives are not asking tenants if they have any other repairs before they leave.
Said that if we could provide dates, times and addresses for these repairs we could look into the matter.
Said that the PIT team now has 2 extra gas compliance staff to help Rob Faulkner with the workload; we have also recruited a specialist Fire Safety Officer just for the PIT team.
4 – Work Plan
Said that the overall response from the call-back exercise done on Friday 30th August was very good; some tenants did say that the operative had not asked them for a score despite the fact that a score had been recorded on the system.
Said that one of the operatives on an intervention suggested that we have a card which is handed to the tenants at the start of the job; the tenant then has the chance to fill in the card whilst the operative is working and he can take it at the end of the job. This would be done at no cost to the council. He asked the group if they wanted to trial this idea.
Said that she thought this was a good idea.
Said that it was not a good idea.
Said that if this is tried the card would need to be sealable so that the results were kept private.
Suggested that we create an example to bring to a future meeting for further discussion.
Said that we are looking to amend the repairs policy; we hope to have any changes implemented by April 2014. The changes will include: introducing information regarding driveways; some changes to reflect the improved Tenant Improvement policy and procedures; decoration vouchers; tenants responsibilities; and we also want to look at the necessity of installing electric fire suites. We would like to set up working groups to discuss these individual issues; there will also be an opportunity to contact tenants who have an electric fire suite to ask them questions about whether or not they use it and if they feel that they are necessary. The changes are not about saving money from the repairs budget, but are about spending our budget more wisely and providing things that are appropriate and wanted. The support criteria will remain so that where vulnerable tenants are not able to do certain jobs for themselves we will be able to do these jobs for them.
As part of the policy review, a copy of the current repairs policy has been included with these minutes (see action RM020).
Said that she would like to look at the failure demand from sub-contracted responsive works.
Said that she thinks we will be able to provide figures relating to this.
Said that in Sheffield, if an operative was at fault for a responsive failure, that operative would be made to return to complete the job properly. He said that he had been told that we would be implementing the same procedure in Stoke.
Said that we have monitoring and supervising procedures in place regarding go-backs and failure demand. This will ensure that if an operative fails to complete a certain repair satisfactorily due to a training issue, it helps to identify the training issue and ensure that all operatives are fully trained in the necessary trades.
Said that Stoke operates in a different way to Sheffield; due to these differences if we operated the same system here in Stoke then a tenant could be waiting a long time for the same operative to become free again to return to complete the repair properly. Said that we do not get a lot of failure demand from our domestic sub-contractor pool; this is due to the rigorous processes that contractors have to go through to be approved by Kier and the constant evaluation processes.
Said that where tenants are provided with temporary heating, this is not always collected following repairs to the heating system. This needs to be addressed.
Said that in some instances tenants do not allow access for Kier to collect the temporary heaters.
5 – Tenant Board Update
Said that the Tenant Board are currently looking at hard-to-let void properties.
Any Other Business
Asked for an update regarding the tenancy and repairs DVD.
Said that this is now in the final stages and we will be making arrangements for the Service Improvement Panel members to get a preview of the DVD as soon as it is available.
Asked if, in cases where people lose earning to stay at home for a repair and Kier fail to turn up, are those tenants compensated?
Replied that they are not; No contractor can compensate customers for failing to turn up and there is no legislation to make them do so.
Asked a question regarding the fire doors – whilst this is a planned issue, there will be people calling the responsive repair line for repairs to fire doors that have been incorrectly fitted. Asked who pays for the responsive repairs visits in these cases?
Replied that there are flags on the system for all of the affected fire doors and all calls are passed on to Rachel Forster. No payments are made from the responsive repairs budget for these visits.
Said that the council should not be paying anything for these visits.

Date of next meeting:Thursday 3rd October, 2-4 pm, in Meeting Room 1 at Bentilee Neighbourhood Centre.

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