Repairs Service

 

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Quality

Dane Housing is committed not only to building good quality affordable new homes but also to ensuring that existing homes are maintained to a high standard, with excellent modern facilities.

We employ a highly skilled, professionally trained, in-house team of property maintenance specialists. Our commitment to quality is reflected in our investment in training at every level throughout our Property Maintenance division. All our apprentices undertake recognised qualifications and training programmes. At the same time, we support Property Maintenance managers studying for degree qualifications. Our commitment to quality has resulted in our Property Maintenance division recently being awarded the ISO9001 quality mark.

Investment

Keeping our properties up-to-date, with modern facilities, relies on a significant financial commitment therefore our annual property maintenance budget currently stands at £4.5 million.

What We Do

The maintenance work that we perform falls into one of the following categories: 

  • Responsive repairs
  • Planned and decent homes / programmed work 
  • Cyclical maintenance 
  • Repairs to void / empty properties 
  • Energy conservation work 
  • Gas servicing
  • Renewable energy
  • Private works for home owners and commercial properties

Responsive Repairs

Responsive repairs are those repairs we carry out in response to calls made by our residents to our repairs call centre, we are currently spending approximately 1.1 million pounds per annum on responsive repairs. Our call centre deals with approximately 12,000 calls per annum from Dane residents. All calls are prioritised according to set criteria and we ensure that all repairs that are classified as “emergency” are responded to within two hours.
To ensure that our responsive repairs service is of the highest possible quality, we continually monitor our performance in two ways:

  • We use our information technology systems to monitor how many of our jobs are completed within target – this currently stands at 98.5% of emergency jobs, 95% of urgent jobs and 95% of routine jobs. 
  • All residents who have responsive work completed on their property receive a copy of the job ticket and a post paid questionnaire. We use the returned questionnaires, not only to monitor how we are performing, but to look at ways in which we may improve our services.

Planned and Decent Homes

Dane Housing is committed to a long-term programme of repairs, in order to improve both the appearance and performance of our resident’s homes. This year we are spending £800,000 on an extensive programme of refurbishment to include:

  • £204,000 on kitchens 
  • £40,000 on bathrooms 
  • £25,000 on fencing 
  • £15,000 on asbestos removal 
  • £1,350 on security upgrades 
  • £100,000 on electrical installation 
  • £100,000 on Brunswick Street re-wire 
  • £245,000 on re-wire programme 
  • £20,000 on lintels

Cyclical Maintenance

Cyclical maintenance covers the maintenance work that has to be repeated on a regular “cyclical” basis, such as external painting or gas servicing of your heating appliances. We are spending approximately £670,000 this year on cyclical maintenance. This work includes:

  • £100,000 on internal paint 
  • £50,000 on annual painting, sheltered housing 
  • £170,150 on gas inspections 
  • £50,000 on electrical testing 
  • £300,000 on heating response and maintenance

Voids

When one of our properties becomes vacant we inspect the property and produce a schedule of repairs required, in order to bring the property back up to the Dane standard, before re-letting. The amount of work required varies from property to property.

Energy Conservation

All of our new homes are built to comply with the Housing Corporation’s affordable warmth criteria and to Eco Homes standards. We are equally committed to improving the energy efficiency of our existing homes. This year we are spending £50,000 on the installation of loft insulation and cavity wall insulation.  We are fortunate to obtain significant levels of funding from utility companies to support this. This expenditure is in addition to the sums of money also spent on the installation of PVCu windows, the upgrading of boilers to energy efficient models and the installation of thermostatic radiator valves and programmable timer units. All of these measures are deigned to improve the energy efficiency ratings of our residents homes.
We have developed a partnership with the Efficient Energy Centre where training and meetings can take place, with an aim to install more efficient heating and cooling appliances. http://www.theefficientenergycentre.com/

Environment

We acknowledge that our activities do have an impact on the environment, we have therefore established a working group where residents are invited to be involved in discussing how the company can change its working practices to minimise the impact.

Gas Servicing

By law, we have to check the safety of all gas appliances every year. We have a highly skilled team of gas service engineers, who perform this work for us. We are spending £350,000 this year on gas servicing. In addition to the servicing of our gas appliances, we are spending a further £650,000 on the following work: 

  • Replacing our older central heating boilers with modern, energy efficient models 
  • Fitting programmable timer controls to central heating systems, to give residents more control over the heating of their homes 
  • Fitting thermostatic radiator valves to give greater control and improve energy efficiency

Gas Safety Leaflet

Who Performs The Work

The vast majority of our repairs and maintenance work, other than the planned maintenance work, is carried out by our own highly skilled team. For the planned maintenance work, and certain other projects, we partner with private contractors.We have established excellent partnering working relationships with several contractors who are highly experienced in these kinds of schemes. It is important to note, however, that when private contractors are employed they work to a set of pre-defined quality standards and their work is constantly monitored, to ensure that the project is completed successfully, on time and to budget.

Job Allocation

When a repair request is received it is assessed and given a priority, depending on the urgency for the work to be carried out.

The priority levels we use are:

Emergency repairs

Response will be within two hours of the request in order to make safe the problem. After been made safe, the repair will be completed within two hours. Otherwise, arrangements will be made to complete the repair within 24 hours.

Urgent repairs

The work will be completed within seven days of the request being reported.

Routine repairs

The work will be completed within 31 days of the request being reported.

Programmed repairs

If the repair is to be corrected as part of a planned programme of work that is already scheduled to be completed on your property, then the work will be carried out as part of that schedule. This may take longer, potentially up to six months, depending on the specific planned programme.
Once a priority has been allocated to your repair, then one of the following actions will be taken:

  • If your report is an emergency repair then a tradesmen will be contacted and sent to your property within two hours.

For non-emergency work:

  • If your report is not sufficiently clear for us to be able to identify the problem accurately, then we will contact you to seek clarification. If we are still unable to identify the problem, following discussion with you on the telephone, then we may arrange for an inspector to visit your property to assess the problem. 
  • If your report is clear enough and the repair identified, an appointment for internal repairs will be provided during the initial telephone call. If the repair is for outside work, an appointment will not be made; as such work can be dependent on the weather conditions. A repair acknowledgement letter will be sent to you in the post, together with a post-paid satisfaction form. The acknowledgement will advise you of the work to be done and either confirm the appointment or the latest date by which this repair should be completed. 
  • One of our trades people will contact you by telephone, to confirm the appointment prior to the repair being undertaken or for outside work, to agree a convenient time to complete the work on your property. If you are not at home, they will leave a card for you to let you know they have called. You should then call the number on the card to arrange for another visit. 
  • Once the work has been completed, we would urge you to complete your satisfaction survey slip and return it to our offices. 
  • After the work has been completed on your property, we may contact you to arrange for one of our property inspectors to come and inspect the work. This process is an essential part of our ongoing quality control assessment.
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