One year since we implemented our centralised repairs hub, hear about the team’s progress and the difference they’ve made to our repairs service.
In May 2024 we changed how we arrange and oversee repairs, bringing in a dedicated delivery team to manage the process from start to finish and enable us to deliver a better repairs service to our residents.
In the 12 months since, we’ve handled a staggering 133,559 jobs, with 85% of those being addressed and allocated within 48 hours.
We’ve made some headway in improving our repairs satisfaction figure too. In April 2024 the year-to-date figure for the percentage of residents who were satisfied with their last repair was 77.8%. By March 2025 that figure had risen to 81.7%. This is positive, but we know we still have work to do.
The recent implementation of the Voice of Our Customer repairs surveys is giving us even more insight into how we’re doing and allows us to respond to you to put things right when we’ve missed the mark with our service. It’s also obviously great to hear when we’ve done things well.
“The person from Notting Hill Genesis was so patient, understanding and listened – 5 stars. What I admired the most is that this adviser went above and beyond to help my situation taking in personal factors, such as other appointments. He was also very truthful with me from start to finish, which allowed me to know where I stood at all times. So, thank you!” - A resident’s survey response
Emergency jobs are handled swiftly and effectively too — on 90% of occasions, a contractor is appointed within just an hour.
How we’ve made improvements
A big part of our work has been building strong relationships with contractors, knowing when and how to challenge them to get the best results. Our repairs hub colleagues have spent the year getting familiar with each contractor and figuring out the best ways to work together.
Again, your comments from the Voice of Our Customer repairs surveys are invaluable to help us hold our contractors to account when they’ve not completed a job to the standard you expect, left a mess after completing the job or not turned up when they said they would.
Our three regional teams have been busy understanding the unique needs of each area and challenging old habits that didn’t quite line up with our policies.
Every day, the hub is dedicated to making residents’ experiences better — whether that’s responding quickly to contractor queries or following up to ensure everyone’s needs are met. It’s all about making things smoother and better for everyone involved.
We also recently invited a group of our involved residents to come in and see for themselves how the hub operates in a bid to help you feel more involved in the service we offer.
Ongoing challenges
We still have vacancies for about a quarter of the posts in our team, which impacts on our ability to progress work as quickly as we would like and respond to queries.
Also, IT issues with our contractors have recently impacted services, with their data not being able to communicate on our systems. We’re working with Wates and Plentific, which provides our digital repairs marketplace, every day to try to resolve this problem.
The changes we’ve made in our repairs service are beginning to show dividends which will help us meet the target of fixing things well and fast as set out in our Better Together corporate strategy and the repairs workstream of our regulatory compliance plan.
We know there is still work to do, but the foundations are there for us to build on.
