Reimagining housing repairs in the London Borough of Redbridge
Improving the way housing repairs are booked, managed and tracked with a digital SaaS product.
The challenge
Local government is seeing huge challenges in housing repairs services. With tenants rising needs and limited resources, it’s time for a digital change.
The housing team at Redbridge Council were looking to build their tenants’ confidence in their service. Their housing repairs service was receiving a high volume of phone calls with backlogs from the pandemic. Tenants were making a lot of repeat phone calls and emails, and there was no way for them to self-serve.
The solution
Repairs, our online housing repairs SaaS product, aligned perfectly with the council’s brief of improving, booking, managing and tracking housing repairs for residents online.
By using our SaaS product, Redbridge can make informed decisions specific to their tenants.
They’ll also continue to lower their costs with continual upgrades included as part of the service.
Running on Made Tech’s SaaS public cloud infrastructure and integrated with the Mears contract management system (MCM), the project took just weeks from initiation to go live.
“We needed an online housing repairs service that would work smoothly for our citizens and fit around their everyday lives. With Made Tech’s help, we’ve now got exactly that.”
The results
Out of the first 116 repairs booked through the platform, 79 were booked during office hours, while 37 were booked out of hours.
70% of these users reported repairs from mobile devices – helping free up staff time and get tenants’ repairs sorted much quicker.
The product has already helped the council by:
- improving the way housing repairs are booked by users online
- reducing failure demand and lead-time-to-repair
- supporting the repair service to run more efficiently
- increasing confidence and take-up of digital services
- improving resident satisfaction by creating a 24/7 accessible service
What’s next
As a customer, Redbridge will be an integral part of future product development, helping us understand the changing challenges their housing team faces, particularly around areas like data.
Along with our other customers, Redbridge will join a growing community of practice around our housing platform, where we’ll share learnings and encourage open feedback. With frequent updates delivered at no extra cost, Redbridge’s housing repairs service will continue to serve evolving user needs.
Case studies
Building a housing repairs service for easy reuse across the UK
Building a simpler, faster service to report housing repair needs using the GOV.UK Design System in the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
Supporting residents with a modern data platform
Encouraging collaboration, better visibility of data and sharing information through a new platform at Hackney Council.
