Maintenance Department
 
These pages highlight the work we do, how we can help you and how to get in touch with us when you need our services.

Maintenance provides a comprehensive repair service for tenants and ensures that the association’s housing stock is kept in good condition.
 
People living in our properties are able to report a repair 24 hours a day. During office hours our frontline staff take the calls and arrange for contractors to do the work. In the evenings, emergency calls are taken by an out of hours service and if necessary they will arrange assistance. During the last year the department has handled 60,000 calls. This led to 24,000 repair jobs being carried out.
 
As well as providing a responsive service that meets tenants’ repair requests, the department manages planned maintenance work. Programmes replacing old or broken parts of buildings, such as the roof, windows or heating system, are run on a five-year cycle. There is also a modernisation scheme which leads to the complete refurbishment of selected properties. When people move out our relet team ensures our homes are fit for new tenants to live in.
 
Maintenance has led the way within NCHA in involving tenants in our work. The department’s Customer Advisory Panel (CAP Group) was formed 18 months ago. The group is run by and made up of tenants. It meets once a month and is able to get involved in any issue within the department. Importantly, the CAP group is involved in deciding how maintenance’s budget is spent.
 
A key change in the last two years has been the development of an in-house team of tradesman and engineers. Direct Maintenance Services (DMS) includes joiners, plumbers and gas engineers. NCHA now has its own staff dealing with boiler breakdowns reported by tenants. We also fulfil our legal requirement to check gas appliances once a year with our own engineers. More tradesman and apprentices are now being employed and in the future more and more repairs will be carried out by our own staff.