Elected Member Briefing - Transfer of housing repairs calls to the Customer Service Centre

About this Briefing Note

Report by: Elaine Ritchie, Strategic Lead, Housing and Communities 

Date: 12 March 2025

Subject: Transfer of Housing Repairs Calls to Customer Service Centre

Details

Purpose

This briefing is to inform Elected Members about changes being made to the way Housing Repairs calls are handled, as part of the Customer Services Consolidation. 

Briefing Information

The Customer Services Consolidation project, part of our Transformation Programme, is working towards making the way we handle enquiries from the public more efficient.

An extensive review of Housing Repairs call volumes and processes has been carried out as part of the project. As a result, from 1st April 2025 all repairs telephone calls, online repairs requests and enquiries from tenants will be handled by the Council's main Customer Service Centre (CSC). This means there will no longer be a Housing Repairs Centre as the first point of contact for customers. However, we will continue to provide excellent customer service under this new arrangement.

Tenants who telephone to report a repair will not notice any difference under the new arrangement. Three Repairs Advisors will transfer and become Customer Service Advisors and part of the wider CSC team. The remaining Repairs Advisors will move into new posts as Repairs Assistants and be responsible for taking a proactive approach to ensuring customers are kept informed about progress with repairs work in their home. They will also be responsible for recharges, subcontractor payments and dealing with more complex enquiries for repairs.

Reporting repairs by email

In line with our digital transformation programme, the Housing Repairs generic email account will be deactivated. We currently receive around 500 emails a week, but only 19% are from tenants reporting a repair or enquiring about outstanding work.

The bulk of emails come from the Housing Locality Teams, contractors and Repairs Inspectors. These emails often have to be followed up by Repairs staff for additional information, making this a slow and inefficient way for customers to report a repair.

We also receive so many emails into the account that working through them can take a while, meaning emails can remain unanswered for some time.

What this means for Housing staff

From April 1st we will no longer accept repairs requests by email from customers, or from our Housing colleagues on behalf of customers. All staff have been asked to remind customers of the two reporting options available to them from April 1st - either telephone to report their repair or support them to report online at MyPKC. During March 2025, all Housing Teams are giving consistent advice to customers about future repairs reporting methods and will not submit email requests to the generic repairs email account on their behalf.

There will be a new telephone number for internal use only to make urgent enquiries, and we will share more on this once it is set up.

What this means for tenants

Customers who regularly report their repairs by phone or online will not be affected by the change. They can continue to use these channels in the normal way. From 3rd March 2025, customers who contact us by email will receive an auto response advising them that the email account is being deactivated on 1st April 2025 and signposting them to the two available reporting options. Information will be issued through social media channels and email at the same time to highlight the change. The next edition of On The House magazine will also feature a reminder for tenants. We will monitor and review this new arrangement to ensure tenants and other customers continue to find it easy to communicate with the Council as their landlord.

Next Steps

The Repairs team will continue working through all our processes and keep you up to date with any changes that may affect the wider Service.