An update on our repairs service

We have some important news about our repairs service. Lately, our repairs teams have been dealing with a lot more requests for help. We understand that this may have caused worries for those who need support or are waiting for repairs. That’s why we want to tell you about the changes we are making to improve our service.

First of all, we want to say sorry. We know that delays and rescheduling can be frustrating for you and your family. We are truly sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. We understand that an apology doesn’t fix the repair problem you are waiting for, but we want you to know that we are working as fast as we can to address it.

Let’s talk about the current situation

Right now, we are receiving a lot of repair requests, both emergencies and non-emergencies. These numbers are higher than ever before, even higher than what is normal for our industry.

To give you an idea, last year we got about 15,000 more requests than we usually do. This increase was expected because of the safety measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were asked to report only emergency repairs.

However, instead of the number of requests going down as we expected, we have actually seen even more people asking for help with both emergency and non-emergency repairs.

Emergency requests have gone up by 33%, which means we have to respond quickly to keep everyone safe. Unfortunately, this has made it harder for us to finish non-urgent work as quickly as we normally do.

During this time, we have had to spend more of our time and effort to follow new laws. These laws help make sure that your home is safe for you to live in. Because of this, we need to give this work extra attention and make it a priority.

What are we doing about it?

To make sure this doesn’t cause more delays, we have taken some actions:

• Our staff are working overtime in the evenings and on weekends, but we are also making sure they don’t get too tired or stressed from working extra hours.
• We are getting help from contractors to handle the high demand for repairs.
• We have brought in more people from different parts of our business to help with repairs.
• We are grouping together similar repair jobs for contractors to do. This way, they can do a bunch of jobs at once and finish them faster, without affecting other repairs.
• We have worked with tenant representatives to decide which repairs should be prioritised. This means we can focus on the most important repairs first and reduce the need to reschedule. The tenants have been involved in this decision-making process and will approve the final priority categories.
• We have hired one person to handle complaints from tenants affected by the backlog, and two people to support our admin staff who are contacting people waiting for a repair.
• We have formed a special team to deal with damp and mould issues, which have been increasing.

Good quality repairs

Even though we have faced challenges with the number of repair requests and the delays they have caused, when we finish the repairs, you are telling us that you are happy with the quality of the work. Here are some important facts about our performance:

• 92% of repairs are completed on the first visit
• 49878 repairs were completed last year
• 93% of emergency repairs are completed on time
• 81% of customers are satisfied with their repairs

What can you do?

If you need a repair, whether it’s an emergency or not, please make sure to tell us about it. We want to help you as quickly as we can.

When you report a repair, we will ask you some questions to understand what kind of help you need.

The easiest way to do this is by calling our Customer Services Team on 03000 030 888 or logging on to your My Trivallis account.