By Chris Stansell MRICS MAPM, Managing Director, Earl Kendrick London
In our many roles as project and building consultants for residential property managers, one thing our surveyors have all noticed is a lack of focus on longer-term, proactive maintenance, particularly at height.
In the public sector and amongst housing associations in particular, insufficient forward-looking maintenance is having a dire impact on the number of complaints received. Housing Ombudsman Richard Blakeway told ITV News in December: “We have faced an unprecedented increase in complaints over the last year. Increased awareness of our role, media coverage on the quality of some social housing together with the challenges faced by social housing landlords with the cost of living crisis and ageing homes have all contributed to this. We expect complaint volumes to remain high and would reinforce the need for landlords to have effective leadership to drive a culture of learning and improvement.”
Conspicuous by its absence in Richard Blakeway’s statement, is reference to a lack of proactive maintenance, which we estimate is driving a 63% increase in complaints to Mr Blakeway’s office.
A recent ITV News investigation into this surge in complaints and the reasons behind the surge inevitably comprised emotive interviews with tenants, examining despairingly at holes in their ceiling caused by water ingress. In one tenant’s case, she and her family had suffered one leak through their ceiling per year, every year, over 13 years renting the same flat.
This 15 December broadcast continued an ongoing ITV News investigation which had found widespread issues of disrepair and poor complaints handling across the social housing sector. Their investigation, claims ITV, led to an independent review by the National Housing Federation (NHF) and the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) which calls for an audit of millions of homes in England including for damp and mould. The tragic death in 2020 of two-year old Awaab Ishak from prolonged exposure to mould will only encourage the independent review to accelerate its own investigations, reach conclusions and empower those who need to improve the standards of proactive building maintenance.
Most of our work is in the private sector, where leaseholders usually have more influence over the management of their block of flats. Where we are dealing with a competent managing agent or directly for the RMC, proactive maintenance is far more likely, meaning far fewer catastrophic incidents like those facing social housing tenants. But these events do happen in the private sector and many – if not most – managing agents up and down the country could be taking a much more on-the-front-foot approach to building maintenance.
We estimate around 650 managing agents manage blocks of flats containing circa £4 million leaseholders. A small minority of these 650, in our estimation, organise proactive surveys of the building fabric of their blocks of flats. Why? Downward pressure on service charges plays a part, exacerbated by the current cost of living crisis. And there is overreliance on contractors and a trial-and-error approach which is often a waste of money. Usually, it’s simply down to property managers being under too much pressure putting out metaphorical fires, rather than planning ahead. Proactive maintenance reduces the number and severity of catastrophic events, and saves money, time and hassle in the process, yet the industry is overwhelmingly reactive.
My team at EK London and wider group thorough enjoy passing on wisdom about proactive building maintenance, especially through seminars and webinars. There’s always plenty of head nodding and intelligent questions posed, so it’s clear we’re all on the same page. Those intelligent questions opened our eyes to the challenges property managers are facing when attempting to be more proactive, namely a lack of time, service charge funding, and awareness of the solutions available.
Over the last year or so, we have listened to you and we have been working towards a holistic, cost-effective approach to the most difficult of maintenance challenges: maintaining at height. Building on the successes of EK Digital and our industry-leading drone photography, we launched EK Rope Access Surveys, meaning we can access roofs, lightwells, rainwater goods, drainage channels and façades safely, by abseil, and even make the necessary repairs whilst attached to the ropes. Sometimes the problem is not obvious, and that is where state-of-the-art thermal imaging comes in, allowing us to see how water is moving and penetrating through roofs and façades and into people’s homes.
We can also estimate U-Values, which assess the rate of heat loss through all the combined elements that make up the roof (or floor, or wall). The lower the U-value, the better insulated the roof is, and as a minimum, it needs to comply with the latest building regulations.
Building surveyors are enormously beneficial to property managers, yet underutilised. Contractors have their place as far as diagnosis is concerned and we work closely with contractors on your behalf to brainstorm water ingress problems and to get problem fixed.
Before your residents hit the roof, seek help from the experts to get the facts about your buildings through proactive surveys. But when the worse happens, note exactly where the water ingress issues are manifesting, ask for photos, and call out your building surveying partners to pinpoint the issues.
