Our main priority is to make sure that we keep our employees, contractors and residents safe, so we’re following guidance from Public Health England and government on which services we can continue and how these can be carried out safely (such as social distancing and wearing a face covering in your home).
This guidance says that work like repairs and maintenance can continue in people’s homes, as long as the tradesperson is well and has no symptoms. This is particularly the case for emergency repairs.
If you're more at risk because you’re clinically extremely vulnerable, clinically vulnerable or self-isolating, we’ll still carry out emergency work or deal with compliance issues but we'll agree in advance exactly how to do this safely.
Critical incidents
Here are the sorts of critical incidents and repairs that we’d deal with as an emergency:
- No heating and no hot water
- Smell of gas, carbon monoxide incident or symptoms of CO poisoning
- No electric
- Major water leak or major/minor roof repairs
- Uncontrolled leak affecting more than one home
- Flooding due to extreme weather
- Fire at a home
- Tree fall or vehicle hitting a property and resulting in structural damage to it
- Reports of legionella
- Asbestos exposure
- Fire alarm fault leading to loss of fire protection
- Door entry system failure preventing access to vulnerable residents
- Lift breakdown (stairlift/passenger lift/through floor lifts)
- Insecure property or security issue
- Sewage treatment plants and septic tank repairs
- Roller shutter failure
- No toilet facilities
- Pest infestations
If we get a call about an emergency repair, we’ll check if you’re self-isolating or confirmed as having coronavirus.
If you’re not self-isolating and don’t have symptoms
We’ll come out and do whatever work’s needed to either complete the repair or make the issue safe – following Public Health England (PHE) and government advice.
If we need to do emergency work outside office hours (from 6pm to 8am on Monday to Thursdays and 6pm Friday until 8am Monday) and we can’t complete a repair, the next working day we’ll assess how urgent any follow on works are. We’ll either book them in or see if they can wait until a later date.
If you’re self-isolating or have symptoms
We’ll first try and solve the issue remotely.
If we can’t fix it that way, you don’t have symptoms and you’re happy for us to attend, we’ll come out while following social distancing and other PHE guidelines.
If you do have symptoms, we’ll discuss with you what other options there may be.
We’re continuing to work on empty homes so that we can get these ready for new lettings or for residents who may need to move in an emergency (such as after a fire or because someone is homeless and needs to self-isolate).
We’ve issued instructions to our teams on how to do this safely and will limit the number of people at a property at any time. Please keep your distance from them if they’re working in your neighbourhood so that we can keep everyone safe.
We’re following guidance from Public Health England and government on which services we can continue and how these can be done safely.
Subject to any national restrictions or local lockdown levels, our contractors are still carrying out communal area cleaning, while following government advice about social distancing.
They may see some staff shortages because of the current situation, in which case your clean may not happen on the day you’d normally expect, but it will still take place.
Staff are working hard to minimise any delays and make sure they keep to the necessary standards across our properties.
At priority sites (for example, housing for older people schemes) we’re completing extra cleaning and sanitising of communal areas. We won’t be passing on to residents the costs for additional cleaning that needs to be done specifically due to coronavirus.
Grounds maintenance and visits for health and safety checks are also continuing.
Most of our 29 playgrounds are open but we’ll follow any government and local authority guidance, in case some need to shut again temporarily to keep users safe.
New signs give users advice to reduce the risk of infection - such as social distancing and not putting your hands in your mouth after playing on the equipment.
A few pieces of equipment may also be closed off where we’re waiting for parts. And a very small number of playgrounds need extensive repairs but remain shut because of supply chain issues throughout the industry.