During August, Johnnie Johnson Housing held Repairs and Estates workshops in the North West, the North East and the Yorkshire and Derbyshire regions. Representatives from the JJH assets and customer services team provided context and updates to any recent estates and repairs developments. Representatives from our repairs partners at Fortem joined the discussion.
The key aims included:
- Communicate an overview of how our services are delivered.
- Explain how responsive repairs and our estate services processes work.
These workshops offered a valuable opportunity to welcome feedback from our customers about their experiences using our services, allowing us to acknowledge the main areas for improvement and key areas of strength within the business.
After hearing from our different representatives about the state of repairs and estates at JJH, we invited our residents to discuss their thoughts with us. In the larger sessions, we broke off into smaller focus groups to enable greater discussion amongst our colleagues and residents. There was a range of personal and scheme wide issues that were raised through these discussions. We appreciate the opportunity to have open and honest conversations between our colleagues and our residents in relation to any repairs and estates issues.
There were a number of key themes that emerged from our discussions:
- Residents are happy with the attitude and overall work quality of our operatives.
- Emergency and short-term repairs have been carried out to a high standard.
- Communal service cleaning has been done to a high standard.
- Residents at all of the workshops felt that communication needed to improve in cases where a repair was larger / more time consuming than initially suspected, so that residents can understand why there is a delay and when the issue might be resolved.
- Feedback from all three of the workshops suggested that there needs to be improvement in regard to gutter cleaning and there was a suggestion of a preventative programme being put in place to stop the recurrence of gutter / drain blockages.
- Community Housing Officers could improve communication related to property wide repairs.
- Some residents noted that they experienced difficulty logging their repairs on the portal.
In response to the feedback, our team developed an action plan to address any issues raised:
- JJH and Fortem are working together to create a quoted works tracker for larger repairs, with agreed timescales for action and key timelines for resident communications regarding the progress of repairs.
- Surveyors for each region will undertake a project to understand the requirements for preventative guttering, including understanding scheme specific needs and budget considerations.
- After greater training of our Customer and Neighbourhoods team, residents will be regularly informed about how to make a repair request and how to track it. These information sessions are likely to take place during neighbourhood coffee mornings.
- The website and JJH portal are currently under development, with usability being a key area of improvement.
Residents felt that they both were able to raise any relevant issues and that they learnt a lot about the future of repairs and estates at Johnnie Johnson Housing.