Half of all phone calls requesting council house repairs in Gateshead are left unanswered, councillors were told on Monday. The rate of calls to the council’s repairs service that are answered has dropped from 87.1% to 49.9%, equating to more than 3,000 missed calls every month.
The problem was blamed on a combination of escalating demand and staffing shortages in the local authority’s contact centre. Last year, shortcomings in repairs and a backlog of complaints were highlighted by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) in a report which concluded that improvement was needed in some areas of Gateshead’s council housing services.
Planned Improvements and Rising Call Volumes
Members of the council’s Housing, Environment and Healthy Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee heard on Monday afternoon that planned improvements to resolve damp and mould cases were among the changes on target to respond to the regulator’s comments. However, concerns were raised about the dramatic decline in phoneline response rates.
The committee was told that the repairs service gets around 7,500 calls every month and that numbers had increased by 25% this year, with the most common reports being about broken radiators, taps, light fittings, and heating systems. Tenants can use the phoneline to report a new repair required, check on the progress of an existing case, or report damp and mould.
Staffing Shortages and Recruitment Challenges
Caroline Borrowman, the council’s head of repairs and building safety, reported that nine new staff had just been taken on to fill vacant posts and that bosses “are hoping in the coming months to see that [49.9%] figure start to rise again”. Green Party councillor Mark Gorman asked how the council had “got into a position all of a sudden where we recognise there is a need to employ nine staff in order to fix the problem”.
He also warned that the lack of capacity in the contact centre risked leaving vulnerable tenants with only a 50-50 chance of their phone call being picked up when they need help. Ms Borrowman replied that the contact centre had been running with less than 50% staff in April this year, and should have 17 people working in it, but that recruitment had been a long process as they had struggled to attract applicants.
She added: “So far this year we have received 51,000 calls. Even doing basic maths, that is a lot of calls per person per day, even if we are fully staffed.”
Online Reporting and Repair Performance
The committee heard that only 13% of repairs are reported first to the council online, putting “continued pressure on telephone services”. A new online system is currently being developed which it is hoped will better allow residents to report issues and manage appointments.
The RSH awarded Gateshead Council a C2 rating following its inspection, concluding that there were “some weaknesses in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and improvement is needed”. Councillors heard on Monday that the number of repairs being completed by the council was now starting to exceed the number of new reports.
The prevalence of damp and mould issues within council properties “remains low” at 2.32% of the authority’s stock and the average number of days needed to fix a damp and mould issue is 35, ahead of a 38-day target. However, the number of non-emergency repairs being completed on time is “significantly below target” at 76.7%, when the target is 93%.
