Firstly, THH would like to apologise to residents for any inconvenience caused by current delays to our repairs service. Set out below are the primary causes and what we are doing to put things right.
Currently we are experiencing very high winter demand with a significant rise in repair requests, and this has coincided with a national shortage of skilled tradespeople, and an unprecedented shortage of building materials. These factors are causing delays in completing work within our normal timescales. We continue to treat emergency/urgent repairs as a priority, and these remain largely unaffected by this problem.
We have spoken with other similar landlords and they have also reported comparable issues of demand for repairs and limits on resources, both personnel and building materials, which suggests this is a wider issue currently affecting the sector.
Repair calls to HSC have increased by 50% and in response to this, I have increased the number of staff within our Housing Service Centre to respond to the high volume of calls we are receiving, and I am pleased to say that we are now answering over 95% of our calls within our target.
Our contractor, Mears, is actively seeking additional technical resources and trades people and we are working closely with them to deliver their improvement plan.
In the short term however, and whilst we have improved our call answering, the underlying issues of higher winter demand for repairs and the contractor resources will take longer to resolve. I am therefore asking for your patience and understanding whilst we go through this difficult period.
I do wish to convey to you that THH and Mears are making every effort to respond to the current high demand.
Finally, I am taking this opportunity to encourage residents to sign up to our online offer – MyTHH if you have not already done so.
We recently spoke to a group of leaseholders from TRAs who raised a series of issues about MyTHH for which we are grateful. Central to these were the ease of signing up to MyTHH. We are working on the issues raised and will communicate the changes we make as soon as possible. In the meantime, you can see the first results of this exercise on the THH website with emphasis on making the signing in process easier.
Once you have done this you will be able to report repairs much more quickly and without the need to contact our Housing Service Centre by phone. Once you have reported your repair on-line, we will then provide you with an appointment time for your repairs to be completed.
I trust the above explains our current difficulty and reassures you that THH are working to resolve it.