Agenda item

Report to follow.

Mark Baigent, Interim Executive Director of Property Services at Homes for Haringey (HfH) introduced the report for this item which set out how the communal repairs on Council estates are carried out by HfH. There were around 9,000 such repairs carried out each year and the report set out how those works were ordered and the improvements made in this area.

Mark Baigent responded to questions from the Panel on the report:

• Cllr Barnes noted the targets for response times as set out in paragraph 3.1.1 of the report and asked how often these targets had been missed. Mark Baigent said that he did not have this information to hand and would respond on this in writing, noting that there are monthly performance indicators for the target time on emergency repairs and for non-urgent repairs. (ACTION) He explained that the data reported on was for all repairs and not just those in communal areas. Cllr Barnes said there would be no need to separate out the communal repairs from the data as she would prefer to see the data for all repairs in full.
• Asked by Cllr Barnes how residents report repairs if they do not use the App. Mark Baigent said that residents can call the Contact Centre which would report jobs through to the Repairs team at HfH.
• Cllr Diakides asked whether there was a cyclical maintenance programme to minimise the long term costs. Mark Baigent said that HfH was working on a new Asset Management Strategy which would set out plans for the next five years and was scheduled to go to Cabinet for approval in January. This would cover all areas of the programme including cyclical works. Cllr Diakides suggested that the Panel should look at the Strategy to see if it could make any useful suggestions. (ACTION)
• Asked by Cllr Diakides whether there was a sinking fund for leaseholders to pay in to cover maintenance costs, Mark Baigent said that he would look into this and provide a written response to the Panel. (ACTION)
• Cllr Brabazon said that some communal areas on estates, such as Broadwater Farm, could sometimes be poorly lit and asked why improvements to these had not been carried out. Mark Baigent said that, as noted in the report, the Haringey Repairs Service will sometimes identify areas in need of improvement and major works in the course of carrying out a repair and will then provide a report to the Asset Management Team with their recommendations. He added that he would speak to David Sherrington, Director of Broadwater Farm, to see how had been built into their refurbishment plans for these blocks. (ACTION)
• Cllr Barnes said that she was aware of cases when residents reported problems at annual site inspections and, though these were logged, residents later reported that the repairs had not been carried out. Mark Baigent said that the Estate Management staff who had carried out the inspection would feed the reports back to the Repairs team. There would then be conversations about the priority for works to be carried out and then orders placed on the repairs system. Safety issues would usually take priority. Mark Baigent confirmed that the reports were logged and could be tracked through the system. Cllr Gordon also described occasions when she had attended estate inspections where issues were diligently logged by officers only to find many of the same issues being reported again the following year having not been fixed. Mark Baigent said that he would need to take this feedback to look into why this was occurring.