Dina Hossain says she feels ‘helpless’ in face of ‘suffering’ by tenants waiting for repairs, reports Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter

Dina Hossain (inset) is concerned around council response times to housing issues

Council tenants are “suffering” while waiting for repairs, according to a Newham councillor.

Labour councillor Dina Hossain said she sometimes felt “helpless” when residents of her ward in Plaistow West and Canning Town came to her with “heartbreaking” stories of delayed repairs and long waits on the phone to Newham Council.

Speaking at a council meeting on Tuesday (9th), Cllr Hossain said: “I don’t know even how to satisfy my residents because seeing them suffering is really heartbreaking.

“Sometimes you see they are with their vulnerable household people, kids, sometimes mould issues.”

She added: “I met a few people in person in my surgery – I saw how they were suffering and honestly I sometimes feel just helpless.”

Cllr Hossain said residents could spend up to an hour waiting to report a repair to the council on the phone, only for the call to drop. She said others found it easier to report issues online – but then repairs don’t get done.

She said: “People have their life, kids, family – so they can’t stay an hour of waiting.”

Cllr Hossain was speaking at a meeting of the council’s housing and regeneration scrutiny commission. Members of the commission discussed a report on work to improve the council’s housing repairs service.

The report said that in July residents contacting the repairs call centre waited an average of 27 minutes on the phone. It said that 28% of calls were abandoned.

This is down from an average of 40 minutes waiting and 37% calls abandoned in February.

The report also said a high number of calls to the contact centre were from residents trying to chase up the status of repairs they’d requested.

These were consistently between 28% and 31% of all calls to the contact centre in each month between Februay and July.

The report said this puts “a significant strain” on the call centre.

It said reducing this type of call relied on “further improvements in keeping to agreed appontment times” making repairs right first time, and improving communication with residents.

David Padfield, the council’s interim director of housing services, aknowledged that the current waiting times “are way to long”.

He said the council is increasing call centre staffing levels and working with consultancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers to improve how the centre works.

Padfield also said the council wanted to “signifcantly improve” the online reporting service. He said: “If we can get more tenants to report repairs online successfully that will take pressure off the call centre.”

Labour councillor Blossom Young, the cabinet member responsible for housing, said the repairs service was making “really important progress”.

It comes after an inspection by the Reglator of Social Housing last year found that almost half of open repairs logged at the council’s housing service were overdue.

But the report to the commision yesterday showed that 90% of repairs were completed within target times over the last twelve months – just on target. However, the average percentage of repairs appointments kept over the same period was 86% – below the 90% target.

Cllr Young said: “We have a long way to go on this plan but it does seem that we’re starting to turn a corner on it.

“But if residents are not feeling that and if residents are not experiencing that, then all the numbers in the world are not going to change that.”

She added: “I completely appreciate we’re not there yet but it is absolutely the direction we’re going in.”

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