BASILDON Council has said that there is still work to do to provide its residents with an effective home repair service following the presentation of its Q3 performance review, with officers noting that high numbers of emergency repairs are largely owed to storms and inclement weather.

At a meeting of the place scrutiny committee on February 27, Basildon councillors examined the report compiled by the authority's director of housing and property Lesley O'Shea, presented by Jonathan Tizzard of Morgan Sindall Property Services; the company contracted by the council to manage home repairs requested by tenants.

Despite the report on repairs and works between October and December 2023 showing a marked improvement compared with the same period the previous year, councillors expressed concerns regarding the consistently high number of emergency repairs raised and a drop in the number of cases which had been attended within two hours of being reported to Morgan Sindall.

Cllr Maryam Yaqub enquired as to why this number remained high – 830, 778 and 773 emergency complaints raised in October, November and December last year respectively, to which Morgan Sindall's partnership director Andy Harris replied that late autumn and winter was usually a prime period for weather-related issues.

He said that numerous named storms during Q3 had seen emergency repairs constitute around 30 per cent of all repair requests over those three months and that a lack of available tradespeople able to attend call-outs often contributed to delayed response times.

The authority's cabinet member for housing and estate renewal, Cllr Andrew Schrader said that "repairs often dominate" his email inbox, but that it is "Basildon Borough Council's aim to offer a high-quality of life to all of its residents".

He added that the housing team and Morgan Sindall had set  "high expectations for our repairs service", and that scrutiny of its processes by the wider council is "very much a part of the improvement process".

Mr Tizzard said: "Ultimately the aim is to run a much more efficient service and to improve the customer experience.. our residents demand better communication."

He said that complaints procedures had been tweaked for Morgan Sindall to be made aware of any complaints "much earlier", with the company now making an initial phone call to all complainants at the earliest opportunity which Mr Tizzard said "goes a long way in reducing distress".

He added: "Things are going well; there's still work to be done regarding finessing processes, investigating when things go wrong and generally improving the image of our service."