Dudley housing chief admits customer communication ‘needs work’

The candid confession was made by Kathy Jones, Dudley’s director of housing and communities, at a meeting of the council’s Housing and Safer Communities Committee on October 10.

Ms Jones was presenting a report on compliance with safety and quality standards where the department had rated itself on areas including keeping residents informed about repairs, maintenance and planned improvements with clear and timely communications.

Ms Jones said: “We don’t think we are that great with communications around repairs, we have got a process in place but I’m not sure we stick to it as rigidly as we should.

“When we look at complaints from customers we have people saying ‘they just turned up and we didn’t know they were coming’ or ‘I stayed in all day and they never came’.

“We have got more work to do on that – it’s not that we are not doing the repairs, we are just not telling the customer necessarily ‘we are going to be late’ or ‘we are coming tomorrow’.”

Committee chair, Councillor Elaine Taylor, was concerned about repairs and maintenance - which the council says are the responsibility of tenants.

She said: “All the time we are hearing a lot of our residents are not happy with changes to tenancy agreements and what they are required to maintain themselves.”

Ms Jones said: “We have a residents’ responsibilities policy we adhere to but nevertheless, if there are individual circumstances where somebody is not able to do something we would look at that and see what we can do to support them.”

Councillor Taylor pressed the director with an example from her ward of a pensioner who needed a simple repair on a cupboard door but was not able to carry out the maintenance herself and was told by a housing officer it was her responsibility.

Ms Jones said: “We will look at individual circumstances but there are things we won’t fix – any more than any other housing provider.”

Councillor Jackie Cowell said she thought some areas where officers had decided they are doing well could be worth another look.

Councillor Cowell said: “That would be around timely repairs and in terms of customers knowing the final timescales for certain repairs, there are certain things where you can really struggle to get things done.”

The director pointed out there were published standards and the authority could prove it was performing within timescales.

The committee was told the council responded to 91 per cent of emergency calls in good time, urgent calls were answered within guidelines on 99 per cent of occasions and others were 91 per cent compliant.

Ms Jones added: “You will always hear about the ones we don’t get in those timescales or it doesn’t get done, but in terms of performance that is exceptionally good.

“Our customer satisfaction is quite good as well so I think there is a good rationale for those.”