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How Social Housing Repair and Maintenance Must Evolve to Help Meet New Home Objectives

Think for a moment about the expectations placed on social housing landlords. It soon becomes obvious that new approaches to repair and maintenance are needed to help them manage existing stock most efficiently and help free up funds for the desperately needed new housing.

Safety compliance, keeping on top of reactive repairs, and ensuring that all properties meet the decent homes standard are big enough challenges in themselves. But this is far from the whole picture. Repair and maintenance services should be expected to deliver added value beyond these minimum standards.

The ‘value added’ expectations are not insignificant. They include:

  • Reducing reliance on reactive repairs through predictive and better planned maintenance.
  • Achieving efficiencies that can be invested in improving and renewing housing stock.
  • Providing a service to residents that matches the best customer experiences in other areas of their lives.
  • Enabling residents to take better care of their own homes.
  • Supporting landlords to improve energy efficiency and move towards ‘net carbon zero.’
  • Delivering social value and promoting inclusion and diversity.

Delivering this agenda is about much more than providing a service. It calls for investment in IT to improve asset data and promote digital self-service, greater levels of community engagement, and flexibility to adapt to changing needs. And all of this while ensuring that social housing providers enjoy greater levels of control and accountability.

A transactional relationship where the service provider counts outputs and bills accordingly isn’t suited to such complex and dynamic requirements. In short, the future demands partners rather than service providers.

Balancing Urgency and Risk

Arguably, the ‘value added’ repair and maintenance partner is needed right now, not some time in the future. But does rapid change imply added risk? Traditional approaches to contracting might be flawed but they are at least proven to work at some level.

Evolution is an appropriate analogy. Not because it takes a long time but because it’s about survival of the most adaptable. Organisms already possessing the characteristics needed to thrive in changed circumstances will be the ones that survive.

So, in terms of ‘value added’ repair and maintenance partners, the safest option would be to look for an organisation that is already doing it. We believe that our partnerships offer a blueprint for how social housing can work better for residents, landlords, communities and the environment.

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