Housing Repairs - Service Standards
The Property Services Section helps the council meet its
corporate priorities around improving housing and ensuring that
there is affordable housing for local people. It does this by
managing the repair, maintenance and improvement of its housing
stock. This information explains how we respond to your calls and
enquiries regarding repairs, maintenance and improvements to your
council home, what services we can offer and what standards you can
expect from us.
What we do
- Our Repairs Call Centre deals with 75,000 telephone repair
requests and queries each year. We are also responsible for the
annual servicing of heating systems for all of the council's homes
(approximately 6,500). In addition, we deliver the council's
cyclical maintenance and capital investment programmes (which
totals approximately £5 million a year) which aim to keep the
council's housing stock in good repair and bring all dwellings up
to or above the government's Decent Home Standard by December
2010.
Fees and payment
- The repairs service is free to all our tenants. However, we may
charge tenants for certain repairs which are considered to be their
own responsibility (a list of these repairs is contained in the
tenants' handbook) or where a repair is required as a result of the
tenant's neglect or misuse. We may also charge tenants a fee of £25
if they use our emergency out of hours service
unnecessarily.
- Leaseholders are required to pay an annual service charge,
which contributes towards the cost of maintaining the structure of
their home.
Our service promise
- When you ring one of our Repairs Call Centre Operators about a
repair to your home, they will try to answer the telephone within
20 seconds. Our operators are available between 8.00am and 6.00pm
Monday to Friday. Outside these hours we will operate an emergency
out of hours service.
- Our operator will discuss your needs or answer your enquiry in
detail and either issue an order to one of our contractors to carry
out a repair or, if needed, arrange for a surveyor to make a
personal visit, to determine the exact nature of the
problem.
- We will issue to you a 'tenant receipt' for every repair order
we issue (except emergency repairs). This receipt will contain
details of the work to be carried out, the date by which it must be
complete, the name of the contractor who is to carry out the repair
and their contact details.
- We will aim to complete all repairs within agreed priority
periods (details of these priority periods and how we prioritise
work are contained in Appendix A).
- When a surveyor needs to attend your home, they will do so
within 10 working days of your initial report of the defect to
us.
- We will arrange appointments with you for both our contractors
and surveyors, where it is practical to do so.
- We will carry out customer satisfaction surveys over the
telephone for 20% of the jobs our contractors complete. We will do
this the day after the work is completed.
- Our surveyors will aim to carry out site inspections of at
least 10% of all the work completed by our contractors to ensure
the work has been carried out correctly and that you are happy with
what's been done.
- We will consult tenants on their aspirations for future home
improvements, so that we can prioritise the type of work we carry
out (e.g. kitchens, windows, bathrooms etc).
- We aim to achieve the highest standards, but there may be
occasions where delays will be experienced. In the case of our
Repairs Call Centre, this may be because we are receiving a high
volume of calls (for example on the first working morning after a
Bank Holiday weekend, the day after a storm or a severe frost).
Please be patient if there is a delay in answering your call, and
we will get to you as quickly as we can. If there are delays in us
answering your call, you will be advised by a recorded message at
the start of your call. There may also be occasions when repairs
are not completed within the target priority periods, again this
may be due to high volumes of repairs, for example because of bad
weather. If delays occur we will take action to ensure that any
previously reported jobs are completed before new requests.
- We might not get it right every time but we promise to keep
trying and we will listen to you. In particular, we want to hear
from you about how the service can be improved and we will try to
take your views into account when we review our service.
How you can help us
- Please ensure that when you contact us, you have details of the
repair you wish to report. Give your name, contact telephone number
and the address where the repair is needed. If you are contacting
us about a repair you have already reported, it is helpful if you
could quote the order number, as detailed on your 'tenant
receipt'.
- Please make sure that you are home for any appointment we or
our contractors make with you. If you are unable to keep an
appointment, contact us as soon as possible to make alternative
arrangements.
- We are happy to assist all our customers with special needs.
Please mention your circumstances to our staff when you contact the
council, as we may be able to give you priority for repairs to your
home if you are disabled, a pensioner or have a newborn
child.
- Please complete the 'customer satisfaction' section of our
tenant receipt honestly and fairly and return it to us as soon as
your repair has been completed. Feedback from these and other
surveys we undertake will help us improve our service for you.
Our general standards
We have a number of general standards, which apply to all services
across West Lancashire District Council. You may find these useful
to note:
- We aim to answer letters and emails within 10 working
days.
- If you request a fuller reply, or the matter requires detailed
investigation, we will send you an acknowledgment within 10 days,
which will set out what action is being taken and when you are
likely to receive a detailed response.
- We aim to answer your phone calls within 10 seconds.
- You can make an appointment to see a manager or speak to staff
in confidence.
- At all times our staff will show courtesy, respect and
sensitivity.
- To view our general standards in full see Corporate
Standards.
Give us your feedback
We want to provide services that delight our customers and which
are second to none. We monitor the standards we set, but we also
value feedback from our customers on how we can further improve
services. If you have any comments, compliments or complaints,
there is a form on which you can make suggestions. These are
available by downloading a copy from our website or by visiting our
main offices. Alternatively you can call Customer Services and one
of our advisers will complete a form with you over the phone.
If you do make a complaint about our services, please note that we
have a formal process for dealing with these. These should
initially be addressed to the service manager whose details are
given below. Our promise to you is that any complaint will be
answered within 10 working days.
Contacting us
Reporting your repair to us should be as easy and as convenient as
possible. To this end we provide numerous ways in which you can
contact us including telephone, email or in person at either of our
Customer Service Points.
Click: Housing
Email: repairs@westlancsdc.gov.uk
Call: 01695 720681 (Repairs Call Centre) or 01695 585294
Come in: 52 Derby Street, Ormskirk or the CSP at the Concourse,
Skelmersdale
The Repairs Call Centre is open 8.00am to 6.00pm Monday to
Friday.
Our offices are open from 9.00am to 5.00pm Monday to Thursday, and
9.00am to 4.45pm on Friday.
We can provide this information upon request on audiotape, in large
print, in Braille and in other languages.
Appendix A - target completion times
Priority
U Works: Immediate response and completion of emergency out of
hours repairs, same day or night as request. (These repairs are
carried out outside normal working hours and are necessary to
prevent risk to safety, danger to health, or serious damage to
property.)
Priority E Works: Immediate response and completion of repairs on
the same day as request. (These repairs are necessary to prevent
risk to safety, danger to health, or serious damage to
property.)
Priority O Works: Completion of repairs within 24 hours of your
request. Time for completion includes Saturdays and Bank Holidays.
(These are repairs, which may seriously affect the comfort or
convenience of the tenant.)
Priority T Works: Completion of repairs within three days of the
initial order being issued. Time for completion includes Saturdays
and Bank Holidays. (These are repairs which may affect the comfort
or convenience of the tenant.)
Priority W Works: Completion of repairs within five calendar days.
Time for completion includes Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays.
(These are repairs, which will not seriously affect the comfort and
convenience of the tenant.)
Priority F Works: Completion of repairs within 14 calendar days.
Time for completion includes Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays.
(These are repairs that are not urgent.)
Priority M Works: Completion of repairs within 28 calendar days.
Time for completion includes Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays.
(These are repairs that are not urgent.)
Priority L Works: Completion of repairs within 42 calendar days.
Time for completion includes Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays.
(These are repairs that are not urgent and may involve items which
have to be manufactured or require special parts which have to be
ordered.)