Repairs & Maintenance

“Improving our maintenance services remains as one of our highest priorities as an organisation, and I’d like to share what improvements have been made so far.

“Changes in our customer contact centre is already showing progress, and this includes prioritising urgent repair calls, and you can find out more about these changes here.

“Over the next few months we will be looking to do a health check of our planning system, prioritising and reviewing resource within the maintenance department, carrying out a skills and training review and continuing to improve the service you receive when we use outside agencies to support our work. We’ll also be recruiting a new Head of Maintenance to support myself in leading the service going forward.

“We’re also looking to improve systems so that we are ensuring an increase in faults being correctly identified when we first visit and we’ll be ensuring that tenants understand their responsibilities more clearly, as well as applying recharges more consistently.

“A review of our Lettable Standard will also take place, and we’ll be consulting with tenants on all these proposed changes before they take place.

“We want to make things right by reviewing our processes and reducing costs to improve the service received, and one that our customers deserve.

“As we head into winter, we expect demand to grow even more, particularly for reports of damp and mould.

“We’re reviewing our damp and mould process, improving how it’s reported and improving communication about how to prevent it. We’d urge our customers to take a look at our dedicated webpage: www.ongo.co.uk/damp.

“We continue to improve our maintenance service for the benefit of our customers and deliver our aims of being a great landlord, being customer focused and being aware of our growth and sustainability as an organisation.

“Thank you for your continued support, patience and understanding whilst we do this.”

• The roof, external walls and doors
• Window frames including catches and window sills (but not glass, unless the damage is due to our own failure to keep the property in good condition)
• Chimneys, chimney stacks and flues
• Access to your home such as paths and steps
• Garage, sheds and outbuildings that have been constructed by us
• Drains, gutters and external pipes
• Internal walls (but not minor plaster cracks, unless these were caused by our own failure to keep the property in good condition)
• Floors and ceilings (not including floor coverings such as carpets, laminate flooring)
• Doors including frames and hinges
• Skirting boards.

• Kitchen and bathroom fittings (including basins, sinks, toilets, baths and pipes but not cookers or other white goods such as fridges)
• Electric wiring including sockets and switches
• Gas and water pipes
• Heating and water equipment
• Fitted fires and fireplaces installed by us
• Smoke detectors that are hard wired and installed by us.

• Communal doors
• Stairways, hallways, landings and passageways
• Lifts
• Rubbish chutes
• Drying areas
• Lighting
• Communal gardens
• Parking areas provided by us.

• Repairing damage caused by you, your family, pets or visitors to your home
• Glass in window panes and doors
• Door numbers
• Sink and bath plugs and chains
• Toilet seats
• Filling any minor plaster cracks or holes
• Fire grates and ash pans
• Light bulbs, fluorescent tubes and starters
• Fuses and batteries for your smoke alarm
• Refuse bins and recycling boxes
• Fences and gates not erected by use
• Sweep chimneys where required
• Unblock waste pipes and drain gullies (except where the blockage occurs outside of your control)
• Electrical plugs to your own appliances
• Any sheds, garages, outbuildings which have not been constructed by us
• Any pathway, patio, paved area or hard standing that we have not installed
• Any water butts, compost bins or rotary dryers where provided and any other gifted items
• The cost and replacement of damaged, lost or stolen keys and door entry fobs
• The use of equipment in your home to ventilate the property such as extractor fans and trickle vents in your windows.

There may be times when it is essential for us to access your home to carry out inspections or emergency repairs. We will give you notice of this, but it is a condition of your tenancy that you give us access and we can take legal action to enforce this, if necessary.

Hello I’d like to talk to you about the actions that we’re taking to improve our repair services.

We’re doing this to make sure that we can provide an efficient and effective service that gives you our tenants the repair services that you deserve and that we as your landlord aspire to deliver.

Lots of good work has already been done, we’ve set up an internal group to look at our processes and to look at why we’re not always consistently hitting the timescales that we want to hit, and listening to and implementing the feedback that we get from you as tenants and from our colleagues.

This work is starting to have a positive impact and services are improving. We’re attending more repairs more quickly but we recognise that we’re not yet at the stage that we want to be at, so some of the things that we’ll be doing over the coming weeks and months include reviewing how we give permissions to you when you want to carry out improvements to your homes. We think it’s important that when you want to carry out improvements we say yes wherever that’s possible.

We’re going to be looking very carefully at different responsibilities for repairs and maintenance; the things that fall into our responsibilities as a landlord and your responsibilities as a tenant, and we’ll provide guidance on that where needed.

We’re also going to be looking very carefully at our recharge policies and rules and making sure that we’re applying these consistently. This isn’t new but we do recognise that we haven’t always been consistent over things like when damage has been caused and making sure that payments are received or that works are carried out properly where the repairs needed are due to damage.

We’re also going to be creating some schedules for non-emergency jobs around different geographical areas and this will help us cut down on traveling time to help us deliver more repairs each day and help get to you quicker .

We’ll also be creating skills and development plans for our colleagues; trying to make sure that as many colleagues as possible can do different types of work that will mean cutting down on repeat visits and finishing more jobs right first time.

We’re also going to be reviewing the work that’s done by contractors and wherever possible have as much work done by our own Ongo workforce.

Some of these actions aren’t new – we’ve always had policies for things like recharges and had responsibilities laid out in the tenancy agreement for what we should do and what you as tenants should do but we recognise that they’ve not always been applied consistently. Have a look at our Recharge Policy if you want to see the rules on that.

We’re confident that taking these actions will help us carry on improving services and help us get back to where we want to be which is providing excellent services and fulfilling our obligation to be a great landlord.

We’re going to continue to review the work that we do, and to do that we need feedback from you, our tenants, so if you want to get involved then please have a look at the getting involved page on our Ongo website. There’s lots of different ways you can get involved with the services that we provide and we recognise that your feedback and your views are the best way that we can improve.