Dozens of Complaints Upheld Against Waverley Housing Maintenance Contractor

Published on: 24 Sep, 2024
Updated on: 25 Sep, 2024

Waverley Borough Council (image Chris Caulfield)

By Emily Dalton

A firm employed by Waverley Borough Council to repair and maintain its housing stock had dozens of complaints upheld against it last year for the quality of its work and damage caused.

Ian Williams is Waverley Borough Council’s largest housing repairs team and last year had more than 100 complaints lodged against it by residents unhappy with the firm.

The single biggest issue was over its poor communication. This was followed by the time it took for work to be done.

Perhaps the biggest red flags were the complaints over the “quality of work” and “damage caused”, on 17 and 11 occasions respectively.

But the firm said it carried out 12,332 work orders in 2023/2024 and that the complaints against it represented just 0.008 per cent of all jobs completed.

According to the Annual Complaints and Service Improvements Report 2023/24 poor communication issues typically arose around a tenant reporting a repair and then hearing nothing back – leading them to “continually chase to get information because they received no proactive communication about delays”.

Repair targets would be missed, the report found, as often jobs required multiple visits to identify issues.

“This was worsened in some cases where follow up appointments were attended without the information that was identified in the previous visit leading to duplication of work and further delays,” the report read.

A third theme with Ian Williams surrounded its workmanship with just under a fifth of upheld complaints relating to the quality of its work or damage caused.

This, the report said, was across a range work including external decorations, drainage, void works, bathroom and kitchen replacements, and window repairs.

Waverley Borough Council defines a complaint as “an expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions, or lack of action by the landlord, its own staff, or those acting on its behalf, affecting a resident or group of residents.”

Cllr Paul Rivers

Councillor Paul Rivers (Lib Dem, Godalming Binscombe & Charterhouse), co-portfolio holder for housing (operations and services), said: “We monitor all comments and complaints received from our tenants because they present an essential and valuable opportunity to learn from their experiences, which will directly help to improve our housing services.

“The council has increased the number of staff carrying out inspections, so we can identify any issues at an earlier stage, and Ian Williams is working hard to ensure jobs are completed in a timely manner.

“Residents have told us that our communication could be better, so we have recruited a Service Improvement Officer to work with the team at Ian Williams to improve complaints handling and customer service. The text message system has been upgraded to ensure our tenants know the date and time of their repair appointment, when their contractor is on the way, and to enable tenants to message back if there’s an issue.

“We still have work to do, but we are already seeing signs of improvement. A recent satisfaction survey showed the number of people who were dissatisfied with repairs dropped from 12 per cent in February 2024 to five per cent in June 2024.”

A spokesperson for Ian Williams said that even though number of complaints was low compared with the overall number of jobs completed it was “still addressing each and every one of the 100 complaints”.

They added: “The average completion of a responsive repair is within 19 calendar days for 2023/2024 but has improved to an average year-to -date for 2024/25 of under 13 days.”

The spokesperson said that to achieve these headline improvements Ian Williams restructured its Waverley business in late 2023/2024 with increased staff headcount to cope with higher demand.

Other improvement measures included increasing its resource base, extra inspections after work is completed, and had pledged a new IT interface due for completion by January 2025 – to “ help appointment availability and order status updates for customers at point of contact with Waverley.”

They added: “We still of course have improvements to make which will build on the above commitments, but in partnership with Waverley, our continued investment and focus will achieve this and continually improve the customer experience as marked in the most recent satisfaction surveys.”