Ealing Council and Ealing Homes – Relationship, roles and responsibilities for Repairs and MaintenancePresentation to Repairs Scrutiny Panel 18/9/07

Context

• In 2004 Ealing Council established an Arm Length Management Organisation – Ealing Homes set up to manage the Council’s permanent housing stock

• The council retains ownership of the its housing stock

• Ealing Homes is a separate company wholly owned by the Council

• Ealing Homes is governed by a board of directors made up from 5 Councillors, 7 tenant/leaseholder representatives and 5 independent members.

• The council is subject to periodic inspection of Ealing Homes by the Audit Commission – previous inspection report July 2005, next inspection programmed for September 2008.

• Performance indicators for housing management including repairs contribute to the Council’s CPA score

Respective Roles

Council Role Responsible for overall strategic direction – Housing StrategyPerformance monitoring and management of Ealing Homes – Client monitoring team

Ealing Homes Role Manage Ealing’s council housing stock and associated servicesDelivery of the Decent Homes Programme

Formal relationships between the Council and Ealing HomesThe Management Agreement is a high level legal agreement for the delegation of services to the ALMO.

Services delegated to the ALMO include Asset Management which, in turn, is made up:•Capital programme management including the Decent Homes Programme•Responsive repairs•Planned Maintenance •Procurement and contract management•Empty property management•Revenue collection (leaseholder service charges)

In order to deliver responsive repairs, planned, cyclical and void maintenance, the council delegates an overall budget for repairs and maintenance of £14 million to Ealing Homes

This is managed to deliver a 60:40 split between planned:responsive as follows:•Planned (eg Communal & building maintenance, heating replacement) 26%•Cyclical ( eg communal services maintenance- lighting , fire safety, door entry systems) 33%•Responsive ( day to day reported repairs) 40%•Non repairs (eg Evictions, ASB repairs, voids decs vouchers) 1%

Formal relationships between the Council and Ealing Homes

Day to day operation of Ealing Homes is governed by the Performance Framework examining:

•Delivery Plan/Business Plan – linked onto the Community Plan and Corporate Plan Objectives details the objectives for the year and the agreed performance targets•Monthly Delivery Plan meetings •Monitoring of KPIs including tenant satisfaction•Monitoring of Budgets and Spend profiles - monthly reports budget monitoring

- budget setting (star chamber ) process

In addition there are:•Internal audit inspections (Deloittes currently auditing repairs)•External audit if BVPIs including :

% urgent responsive repairs completed within government time limitsAverage no of calendar days taken to complete non urgent repairsAverage re-let times for voids requiring minor repairs

Contractual arrangements

Ealing Homes manage 6 main contracts for provision of repairs and maintenance services:

Responsive Repairs (partnering contracts): Kiers BM plc - east

Mears Group plc –west

Gas servicing: QHS

(traditional JCT undergoing retender) Cardinal

Lifts (traditional) Key Elevators

Door Entry Systems(traditional) Community Access Ltd

Ealing Homes Internal Monitoring• All Responsive Repairs over £1000 are post inspected and 10% of jobs under £1k for all repair

orders. • All Voids are post inspected• M&E Team have specific QC procedures for each cyclical contract. For example, spot checks are

carried out on the 12,000 per annum domestic gas servicing programme and each district heating site is visited twice per annum.

• In addition to EH’s own post inspections, all main contractors are required to carry out their own post inspections, and also, telephone surveys

• Postal survey for urgent, routine and Right to Manage (specified) repairs• 10% telephone surveys in addition to postal survey •   “Escalated” Repair problems in order to effectively address service issues and thereby reduce

complaints.• Range of 65 performance indicators internally monitored for repairs and maintenance

More information: Gill TennetTelephone contact number: 020 8825 6087Email:tennetg@ealing.gov.uk

Ealing Homes Responsive Repairs Satisfaction

Satisfaction with overall repairs service 2004/05 to Q1 2007/08

85%

86%

87%

88%

89%

90%

91%

92%

93%

94%

Satisfaction with overall repairsservice

88% 91% 91% 93%

Target 90% 90% 90% 90%

Year end 04/05 Year end 05/06 Year end 06/07 Q1 07/08

Response rate• The Response rate currently is at 14%. The internal target for this year is 15%.

•There is no agreement in this years Delivery Plan to report either repairs satisfaction or response rate but customer satisfaction in repairs is reported to the Delivery Plan meetings in the Comprehensive Performance Reports reviewed quarterly.