Bellsmyre, Garshake, Aitkenbar, Brucehill and Castlehill in Dumbarton. Picture by Bill Heaney
By Democrat reporter
More than 1,000 non-urgent routine repairs reported by council house tenants prior to lockdown remain outstanding.
Councillors, at a meeting of West Dunbartonshire Council the beg requested an update on the status of housing repairs and impact as a result of Covid-19.
In a memo this week, they were told that the national lockdown and continuing restrictions in response to the pandemic has significantly restricted the delivery of the Council’s maintenance and repairs services to tenants.
During lockdown only essential/emergency repairs services could be provided and while non-emergency works restarted on a phased basis in line with the Scottish Government route map and Construction Scotland restart plan at the end of July, resources are limited by social distancing criteria.
As a result of the service restrictions, a significant number 1,283 of non-urgent routine repairs reported prior to lockdown remain outstanding.
In addition, since non-urgent repair reporting began again at the end of July, new repairs reported are scheduled within the new Integrated Housing Management System, and this has resulted in limited appointment slots being available to schedule the outstanding repairs.
To enable available resources to focus on repairs reported prior to lockdown, we are asking tenants not to report non urgent repairs for a 4 week period from Monday, 19 October until Friday, 13 November, 2020, a council spokesperson said.
She added that outstanding non urgent repairs reported prior to lockdown will be completed in this period, and other non urgent repairs reported since the easing of lockdown which have still to be carried out will also be completed where there is capacity to do so.
In addition, emergency and urgent repairs will continue to be reported and completed.
Building Services complete around 700 repairs each week on average excluding gas, void house repairs and housing capital funded improvement works.
Of these 200 to 250 are emergency/right to repair.
Completing 450 non-urgent repairs per week on average would see around 1800 repairs completed in the four-week window from 19 October allowing the service to undertake the majority of repairs reported prior to lockdown.
The service is targeting the end of December 2020 to be up to date with all repairs.
Top picture: Cllr Diane Docherty and Cllr Carolyn McAllister with Council housing department staff.