The Housing Service is in the middle of an improvement journey as it strives to increase performance and provide a better service.
At today’s (Thursday 20th March) Housing Policy Committee, a report was brought to elected members to discuss progress in this area.
Chief among this has been improving the performance of our Repairs Service. This has continued throughout the third quarter, with emergency repairs being completed within their allotted timescale up 7% on quarter one, and non-emergency repairs being up by 10% on the same period.
The result of all this has been more satisfied tenants. Between October and December last year (2024), performance across 11 out of 12 TSMs - collected via our monthly tenant perception survey - was above target. Performance improved in four of those TSMs compared to quarter two - satisfaction that the home is well maintained; agreement that we treat tenants with fairness and respect; satisfaction that we keep tenants informed about things important to them; and we listen to tenants’ views and act upon them.
This is a positive sign that the work we’ve been doing this year to develop our communications with tenants and create better engagement opportunities for them is going in the right direction.
There also continues our work alongside the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) to improve our service and further comply with their Safety and Quality Consumer Standard. This standard requires landlords to provide safe and good-quality homes for their tenants, along with good-quality landlord services.
To help achieve improvements in this area, we have recruited 20 additional staff into the repairs service this quarter, helping to ensure we have the right skilled staff to deliver repairs needed and reduce the backlog of outstanding jobs. Further recruitment is taking place over the coming months to continue this.
However, we do appreciate there is more work to be done. The exception to these improvements in the TSMs continues to be gas safety. Ongoing improvement work is continuing in this area, and we expect to see further improvements in gas safety performance by the end of quarter four.
We also have plans to recruit additional gas operatives and establish a revised Gas Servicing Policy – also approved at today’s committee meeting - which will help us continue our journey to make all of properties safe and gas compliant, again in line with RSH.
We continue to meet regularly with the RSH, updating them on our compliance performance and giving us the opportunity to demonstrate progress in delivering required improvements.
“We have said many times that we are proud to be one of the country’s largest social landlords and to deliver a vital public service to 38,000 households. But, sadly, we accept there have been times when the service we provided our tenants has fallen below the high standards we expect.
“There has long been a journey of improvement in place to tackle this and, alongside the Regulator of Social Housing, we have been looking at many aspects of our service to improve the experience for all our tenants.
“It is great to see this being recognised by those who live in council housing. We know there is more to do, and we look forward to continuing this journey alongside our tenants.”
Cllr Douglas Johnson, Chair of the Housing Policy Committee at Sheffield City Council
The performance report is structured around the three main Landlord Commitments. These are aligned with the TSMs as required by the RSH, our Council Plan outcomes and our Housing service priorities for the year ahead.
To view the report brought to the Housing Policy Committee meeting today and see a full list of successes across the service, head to our website.