On 2nd of March 2022, Jack Simpson wrote in Inside housing about the repair challenges social landlords have to meet. According to him,
Landlords encounter asset management difficulties such as staff shortages, meeting net zero, and rising repair backlogs, to name a few. Direct Works’ Jack Simpson discusses solutions.
Repairs and upkeep have risen to the top of social landlords’ priority lists during the last two years. There has been a shift in the sector discourse after a number of years in which development and meeting the government’s 300,000-homes-per-year target appeared to be the main focus.
Due to a perfect storm of ageing stock that needs to be improved, fire safety issues that must be resolved, and net zero standards that must be reached, social landlords are forced to focus – and spend money – on existing property.
However, it is not the most user-friendly operating environment. Repair teams are dealing with a growing skills shortage, rising material costs, and massive repair backlogs. All of this necessitates quick thinking on the part of the repair crews.
Inside Housing believed now would be a good moment to meet with folks on the front lines who are dealing with these growing problems. We talked for an hour with 11 of Direct Works’ top executives about the most pressing repair and maintenance concerns and how the industry might address them.
Direct Works is a 21-year-old company that strives to bring together associations with direct labour repair services, or in-house repair teams. They exchange best practises and advocate for industry reform. Direct Works now has over 130 local government and housing association members, who are responsible for the repair and upkeep of approximately 2.5 million social housing units. Landlords appear to be reviving their in-house maintenance teams.
Mike Wilson, treasurer and secretary at Direct Works and consultant at Tristar Consulting, adds, “I think at the moment it’s all about insourcing and taking back that control.” “I believe you can improve ties with your inhabitants, and it is particularly difficult to locate good external contractors post-pandemic, so people are eager to have their own inside personnel.”
COVID-19 has touched every sector of the economy, but the repair industry has been hit the most. During the lockdowns, these teams were unable to operate from home and were forced to continue serving residents at great danger.
Despite the fact that the majority of organisations continued emergency work during lockdowns, less urgent work was not always permitted, resulting in a repair backlog.
“I think all of us in the sector would really cringe if we thought any of our customers were left in those situations. We would be very embarrassed”
“For the last two years, it’s been like driving on a highway,” says Jonathan Fletcher, Karbon Homes’ associate director of operations for responsive repairs and voids. “You’ve been hitting congestion [in the form of a lockdown], and it builds up into a works backlog.”
This has compelled businesses to be more inventive and innovative in their approach to repairs and workload reduction.
During the pandemic, Jo Whittall, vice-chair of Direct Works and executive director of property services at Clid Housing in the Republic of Ireland, says his company lowered the amount of gas servicing inspections it performed. Annual gas inspections are considered best practise in the Republic of Ireland, but they are not a legal necessity as they are in the United Kingdom.
He continues, “We were able to conduct a risk assessment on the possibility of death due to not maintaining a boiler vs the likelihood of causing a death with COVID-19.” “We submitted it to the board in a report, and they agreed that we shouldn’t undertake any gas servicing for the next 12 months.”
He claims that the adjustment had no negative consequences and, more importantly, that it averted about 5,000 house visits during the peak of the pandemic.
Concentrate on the state of disarray.
In response to the outbreak, Places for People’s head of scheduling and logistics, Stacey Baldwin, says the landlord created a new triaging approach and performed some repairs remotely.
Places for People, which operates houses from Aberdeen in north-east Scotland to Truro in Cornwall, looked at where its operatives are based, where its services can be utilised, and where services can be outsourced. According to Ms Baldwin, the organisation is now using a hybrid strategy in which it outsources work in its outlying areas while developing in-house expertise in locations where there is a high demand for certain services.
“I think as professionals we have always tried to do right by customers and we welcome the [social housing] white paper and ombudsman report”
The COVID-19 pandemic, according to Steve Kirk, Citizen Housing’s head of maintenance operations, is far from ended. As a result of the infection, 80 of his 450 team members were unable to work just after Christmas.
However, the year 2021 was not only dominated by the epidemic. With a high-profile investigation by ITV News uncovering terrible circumstances that some social housing tenants are living in, housing degradation has been thrust under the spotlight.
“I believe that all of us in the industry would cringe if any of our consumers were put in that scenario.” “We’d be humiliated,” says Phil Pemberton, Riverside’s director of asset planning and delivery. However, he believes that many of those disorders are related to regeneration.
Increasing regulatory pressure is adding to the media pressure. With an enhanced headcount and a more enthusiastic attitude to naming and shaming under-performing landlords, the new Housing Ombudsman is significantly more proactive. The ombudsman’s report on moisture and mould, according to Mr Pemberton, has given the sector “serious emphasis.”
Meanwhile, the Social Housing Bill will reassign the job of evaluating landlords’ compliance with consumer rules to the Regulator of Social Housing. The performance on deterioration and reacting to tenant complaints will be part of the new standards.
“I think as professionals we have always tried to do right by clients, and we applaud the [social housing] white paper and ombudsman report,” says Russell Thompson, chair of Direct Works and managing director of places management at Places for People.
“Even now I have 15 vacancies that I’m struggling to fill”
He does, however, point out that this occurred in a cost-cutting environment. He continues, “The limits we have are on our finances.” “We’re all trying to strike a balance between asset management investment and development, and we’re all trying to maximise what we can, basically.”
Material cost pressures are also affecting repair services, with a sharp spike in product pricing over the last 18 months having a significant impact on everyone on the panel.
Paul Longman, the leader of big projects at South Essex Homes, who is currently refurbishing three tower blocks, has seen this. “We’re dealing with a 25% price rise on this project right now,” he says.
It isn’t merely a matter of materials being available. There are also insufficient people to do the current tasks, let alone satisfy future demands.
Mr Kirk claims that following the first lockout, his board gave him £2 million to recruit in order to clear the backlog of repairs. “I struggled to spend money because I couldn’t seem to find the right people.” Even now, I’m having trouble filling 15 vacancies,” he says.
And a growing number of people are abandoning the industry. Mr Longman claims that the average age of his surveyors is 55, with one 73-year-old retiree just last month and another 73-year-old slated to retire next year.
The skills deficit is affecting the quality of work as well.
Richard Hazard, repairs consultant with RH Asset Management Consultancy, adds, “A lot of my work is around compliance and particularly fire, and some of the [fire risk assessments] that I see are really horrible.” “I believe we should strive to teach individuals in-house and bring them through, and that is exactly what we are doing, but it is a large ask.”
And that’s before you consider the tremendous retrofit task the sector confronts in order to bring the UK’s social housing stock up to Energy Performance Certificate Band C by 2030 and net zero by 2050.
Mr Thompson says, “We’re still in the discovery phase on retrofit.” If the industry wants to make its 4.3 million social housing buildings net zero by the 2050 deadline, the work will be massive, with hundreds of properties needing to be worked on every week.
Mr Thompson believes that procuring finance will be difficult, as will ensuring that housing associations’ business models are set up to account for the net zero problem.
With an ever-growing number of items on asset management teams’ to-do lists and a shrinking pool of expertise to complete them, the industry will have to think creatively about how to accomplish them.
It remains to be seen if the sector can completely rise to the occasion and meet these objectives. But one thing is certain: repair and maintenance crews will be extremely busy across the country.