Repairs and maintenance can be a costly business but with the help of our ‘trouble shooting’ efficiency team, landlords across the country are not only making dramatic savings and efficiencies, but also improving customer satisfaction with reduced response times.

At Endeavour Housing in Stockton-on-Tees, the result of the team’s repairs service review has been so significant it led to a shift in the entire culture of the organisation, with a ‘customer first’ approach to all services beginning to develop and reviews of other areas of the business now under way.

Chief executive Angela Lockwood said: “The end results have fundamentally changed the way we operate for the better and with the end user in mind.

“The prevailing culture has been challenged throughout the process, which was long overdue, and the end results will be appointment systems, more efficient procurement and shorter processes with an emphasis on the end product rather than front work and some cash savings. More importantly, the service to tenants will improve.”

The company’s mantra to get repairs ‘right first time’ now powers the repairs team and critical time is being saved by staff who are no longer being required to respond to chase up calls from contractors. A saving of £5,000 a year has also been made simply by switching from a postal system to emailing repair jobs to contractors.

Nigel Johnston, Efficiency Manager at Northern Housing Consortium, said: “The efficiency team’s expertise lies in its use under licence of Vanguard Consulting’s method of Systems Thinking, which focuses a new light on the existing processes of an organisation and then strips away any wasted effort and bureaucracy to create a new, streamlined service with the customer at the very heart.”