Taking a proactive approach to disrepair

The May meeting of our Disrepair Improvement Group focused on taking a proactive approach to disrepair through prevention and monitoring and started with Catherine Castillo-Soto, Business Development Director at Travis Perkins Managed Services (TPMS), giving an overview of condensation, damp and mould product trends.

TPMS has seen the split of purchases shift towards prevention and monitoring of condensation damp and mould, away from treatment, she said, as housing providers look to get ahead of the curve.

Building monitoring is a key trend explained Catherine but you need to understand the pros and cons for both you as an organisation and residents.

She introduced Oliver Barlow, National Account Manager at Aico, a supply chain partner of TPMS, who talked attendees through the HomeLINK system, which aims to help create safer, healthier and sustainable homes.

He talked about the key challenges facing housing providers, from regulatory compliance to the cost-of-living crisis, and how systems such as HomeLINK can support them to tackle those.

Oliver talked about a general switch from reactive to pro-active approaches and making data-informed decisions.

He talked about the importance of resident engagement before implementing a system such as this, and explained how Aico takes a mobile unit out to neighbourhoods and talks to residents about the benefits of the system and how it can help improve health and welfare.

Wider Order Reviews

Mathew Baxter, Echelon Group CEO, talked about the Housing Ombudsman issuing wider orders for independent reviews of policy and practice at Sanctuary and Orbit Homes. The former triggered by two maladministration cases and the latter by one maladministration and one severe maladministration case.

He gave some background to both organisations and the cases that led to the reviews, as well as talking through the review process.

He gave potted summaries of the reports, which looked at whether repairs and escalations considered the resident’s vulnerabilities, as well as examining how resident vulnerabilities are recorded.

He ran through the outcomes/recommendations, also outlining the steps that have been taken by the organisations, to prevent such cases arriving in the future.

Mathew rounded off by asking attendees to consider what the outcomes would be if they had to undertake a review, and how they can keep track of key vulnerabilities among residents.