L&Q progress report on resolving outstanding repairs and maintenance issues
This report provides an update on the progress made in resolving outstanding problems that are affecting residents at a small number of our developments.
Since our statement of 13 August we have:
- Established a chief executive-led task force to ensure that we fix all outstanding problems as quickly as possible.
- Created a dedicated operations team to review our approach to compensation for all residents affected by the delays, improve resident communications and provide a single escalation route for outstanding repairs and maintenance work.
- Commissioned an independent review to understand why we have not resolved matters in a timely way and what more we can do to improve the way we deal with defects, repairs, complaints and resident engagement in future.
- Put in place a number of additional checks to ensure that every new home meets L&Q’s high-quality standards. We have also announced a new Home Standard for vacant properties to apply to the 2,500 homes we re-let each year and which we developed with a group of our residents.
The task force has reviewed our entire portfolio and identified a small number of schemes where there have been significant delays in resolving issues, including problems with heating and hot water, drainage, leaks and lift operation. In each case, we have an agreed action plan in place to rectify issues as a matter of urgency. Each scheme has a named L&Q point of contact to improve communication and provide residents with an opportunity to provide feedback. We aim to complete all outstanding repairs, wherever possible, by the end of 2018.
The independent review is being overseen by Board Members Fayann Simpson (Resident and Chair of L&Q’s Resident Services Group) and Betsy Bassis (Chair of L&Q’s Customer Experience Committee). It will report interim findings at the end of this month and produce a final report by 31 October 2018. This review is in addition to our existing plans to overhaul our complaints process, reduce call waiting times and improve online services to customers.
The L&Q Group Board and Executive take these issues very seriously. We have set out the quality of our homes and service as our key priority. Last year we initiated a two-year programme of transformation articulated in our corporate plan, Invest, Grow, Transform. This commits L&Q to increase investment in our existing homes in 2018/19 by £80 million to £200 million a year, invest a further £150 million in new technology to make it quicker and easier for residents to report and manage repairs and for our people to respond more swiftly, and to raise the quality standards for all our new and existing homes.
We are already seeing the benefit of our renewed focus on service with maintenance satisfaction increasing to 88% in August 2018. We have more to do, but we are making good progress.
We would like to thank all residents affected for their continued patience and cooperation in helping us fix all outstanding issues.