Board Member Briefing: how can boards stay on top of repairs?

Cedi Frederick sits on the board of for-profit provider Sage Homes and is a special advisor on housing and inequalities at Good Governance Improvement. He says a board needs to be able to rely on the committees to do most of the “heavy lifting” in analysing repairs and the landlord’s relationship with tenants.

“It’s important we are presented with good-quality data and that it is triangulated. So we’ll see finance figures, complaints figures and ombudsman reports. If the board does not have assurance the repairs service is being delivered, it will then need to take further action.”

Ms Inman adds that “one botched repair [job]” should not necessarily be the focus of a board meeting. However, a pattern of poor performance by one contractor or diminishing satisfaction rates on repairs are “absolutely the purview of the board”.

“So the assurance piece [is] absolutely fundamental. How do we know that our properties are in as good a state as they can be, and that our repairs service is meeting the needs of our customers? That’s the question every board member needs to be asking,” Ms Inman says.

“How do we know… that our repairs service is meeting the needs of our customers? That’s the question every board member needs to be asking”

The changing regulatory framework might not alter a board’s core responsibility to ensure homes are well maintained, but it has brought greater scrutiny on governance and tenant experience. Mr Paine from Savills says: “With the introduction of the new inspection regime and the C grading for consumer standards… the regulator is now looking proactively at the quality of services – and repairs is right in there.”

Mr Frederick welcomes the sector’s renewed focus on tenant experience, saying: “There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that housing associations needed to be reminded about the importance of the quality of repairs.”

‘Knowing the good, the bad and the ugly’

According to Anne-Marie Bancroft, a director in the governance and regulation team at consultancy Altair, boards need a solid understanding of how their association’s repairs process works.

This includes being fluent in terminology that categorises repairs as routine or emergency, what their timescales are, and the definitions attached to jobs, such as ‘work in progress’ and ‘aged work in progress’ – a label which refers to jobs that have not been completed in time.

Boards also need to think about the repairs model, Ms Bancroft explains. Whether a landlord uses a contractor or has an in-house repairs team, it is important the value for money has been recently assessed.

It is not just what board members ask, but who they talk to that matters. Ms Inman says it is important that members get the full picture. “I get more assurance from knowing the good, the bad and the ugly,” she states.

Board and committee members should bring in people who can give them a range of perspectives on what is happening on the ground. Ms Inman chairs Saffron’s service quality committee, which includes independent members who are tenants or staff of other landlords. “We are also looking at how we get representation from trade staff, such as plumbers, to get a completely different perspective,” she says.

“If you’re sitting on a board and you’re not hearing on a six-month basis from your tenant scrutiny group about what’s important to them, board members need to be asking why,” she adds.

This is echoed by Mr Frederick. He says Sage’s board members are encouraged to get “out and about” and talk to officers, ask questions and seek assurance. He adds: “It’s about creating a culture where they can tell us the truth, and where it’s not about just holding a party line.”

A key challenge for boards is ensuring they have strategic oversight over repairs. This is especially challenging for large landlords which, as Ms Bancroft says, are unlikely to be able to look at a single report to find out how the repairs service is operating.

“It can be hard to see the wood for the trees. For large landlords it means doing audits, drawing in complaints, satisfaction, tenant satisfaction measures information – all that should provide the board with a good strategic picture of what their repairs service looks like,” she says.

Andrew Murray is a board member at Clarion, which manages 125,0000 homes and processes 1,200 repairs each day. “The first substantive item on every board agenda is repairs performance, and repairs is the thing we spend most of our time talking about,” he says.

Clarion monitors the condition of its stock and tries to deal with issues before they arise as complaints, Mr Murray says. This is a challenge for many landlords, given the poor quality of a lot of older homes.

“It means doing audits, drawing in complaints, satisfaction, tenant satisfaction measures information – all that should provide the board with a good strategic picture of what their repairs service looks like”

Scrutinising data is key, as even if it seems positive, there can be issues hidden among the figures. “It’s about breaking it down by region, or by office, or whatever the structure is in that organisation,” Mr Frederick says.

To truly understand what is happening with repairs, a board needs to be plugged into complaints. “If you have a poor repairs service, it’s likely that ultimately you have more complaints,” Mr Paine explains. He adds that many boards have been “shaken” by the ombudsman’s tougher stance and the potential for reputational damage through maladministration findings.

Listen to complaints

Earlier this year, Clarion was ordered to pay £10,800 in compensation to residents after the ombudsman made four findings of severe maladministration across three cases. These included failing to fix leaks, blaming a tenant’s lifestyle for the state of the property, and failure to address the root cause of damp and mould.

Mr Murray, who is the board member responsible for complaints at Clarion, says while the ombudsman has come in for criticism from landlords, its reports have “raised the profile” of disrepair, which is helpful. “No one likes to receive complaints, but they are a really important interaction with residents that tell you some of the things that are going wrong,” he explains.

For each maladministration finding, the board is sent the ombudsman’s report, and a briefing on what happened and lessons learned. “Happily, from a fairly low starting point as far as satisfaction is concerned, things seem to be improving,” Mr Murray says.

Clarion is now redesigning how its monitors complaints, Mr Murray says. This includes an automated client-relationship management system that keeps residents more informed on the repairs process and provides detailed status updates on their complaints.

Mr Paine adds that while complaint reporting tends to focus on how well the organisation is meeting the ombudsman’s timescales, it is usually the follow-up action which determines how satisfied a customer is with the resolution of their complaint. That follow-up data should be included in the board’s metrics, he adds.

Mr Frederick highlights that board members are now expected to put a significant amount more work in, as there is greater responsibility on issues such as repairs.  “What we saw with Grenfell and Awaab Ishak is that, ultimately, responsibility rests at the board table. If we don’t get it right, it can have a significant impact.”