Hackney Council,
06
December
2021
|
10:51
Europe/London

£1 million investment to tackle housing repairs issues backlog

Hackney Council repairs service

Over the coronavirus pandemic, the Council was only able to provide emergency repairs across Council properties.

The pandemic has led to a backlog of around 7,000 repairs, with delays causing distress to residents. All Council staff know how disappointing and inconvenient this is for tenants, and together, the Mayor, Cabinet and Council teams are working as quickly as they can over the next few months to tackle the issue. 

Today, we all say: we’re sorry, especially to those tenants and leaseholders we have directly let down

To respond, the Council will pump an extra £1million into its repairs service, recruiting more than 30 staff, ensuring more residents get their leaks, electrical problems and other issues fixed more quickly. 

The investment will reduce a backlog of 7,000 cases that built up during the coronavirus pandemic – when Council workers had limited access to residents’ homes. Staff are dedicated to getting these issues fixed, and are as frustrated as tenants that they weren’t able to resolve them at the time, due to Covid-19 rules.

As part of its wider action plan to tackle the backlog, the Council is: 

  • Recruiting 20 extra repairs workers
  • Recruiting 12 extra call centre staff to improve the speed which calls are answered 
  • Creating a dedicated team to focus on reducing the backlog
  • Completing an urgent review of serious cases to ensure tenants and leaseholders get the support they need
  • Checking in with elderly vulnerable tenants who haven’t reported a repair recently 
  • Providing dedicated properties for tenants who have a serious repair issue to move temporarily, so work can be carried out more quickly

For those affected by the outages in the Shoreditch district heating system recently, the Council wants to assure residents that engineers are reviewing the whole system, they have now fixed the issue and are seeing what can be done to improve the integrity of the whole network to help prevent outages in the future. 

Cllr Clayeon McKenzie, Cabinet Member for Housing Services
Our plumbers, electricians, carpenters, gas engineers and other staff worked so hard during the coronavirus pandemic – often putting themselves at risk during the height of lockdown visiting people's homes to carry out emergency repairs to keep our tenants’ safe.

But we also know that residents are rightly frustrated that they are waiting too long for us to fix things. As a Council leaseholder myself living on one of our estates I have personally seen the impact of our repairs service not being up to the standard we expect. I know that residents are struggling to report issues to us and are unhappy that we aren’t getting repairs right the first time. We hear them, and we’re sorry. 

This £1 million investment will help us tackle the backlog. We’ll prioritise the most urgent cases first, and we’re asking all our residents to be patient while we work through the backlog as quickly as we can.
Cllr Clayeon McKenzie, Cabinet Member for Housing Services

To report a non-urgent repair, tenants can: 

Call 020 8356 3691, Monday to Friday, 8am-7pm; Saturday 9am-1pm

Use our live webchat service at hackney.gov.uk/repairs, Monday to Friday, 9am-4pm

For more information on the repairs service, visit hackney.gov.uk/repairs

Staying safe from Covid-19

Our repair operatives will wear PPE including a face covering.

They will also clean any surfaces touched, and remove any waste and belongings from the work area at the end of each day. They will not ask you to sign to confirm when a repair is complete.