Impact of industrial action blamed for council housing repair stats – with improvements promised to tenants

Lead Councillors have pointed to recent strike action as a contributor to housing repair performance statistics needing improvement.

Wrexham Council is one of the largest stock retaining local authorities in Wales, at November 2023 the Council’s housing stock consisted of 11,071 properties.

In a report on the Housing Revenue Account stats are provided on the repairs targets and what has been archived:

The report to councillors states, “The programmed works timescale has increased due to a delay in attending to this work due to recent industrial action which commenced in September 2023, where 93% of the trade operative staff were absent for a period of seven weeks. This means the jobs become older and as they are being completed they have impacted the overall performance figures.”

During 2022/23, the Housing and Repairs Service received a total of 24,240 of reported repairs and completed a total of 19,531. That figure is explained as, “The shortfall in completed jobs against reported, will consist of jobs no longer required and cancelled, i.e. a property status change and becomes a void, and jobs that have been confirmed and appointments are verified, but lapse over to the next financial year.”

“The Planned Maintenance Team have recently reprocessed additional contractor capacity to assist with the backlog of the larger scale works. They commenced on site earlier this year.”

Wrexham.com asked Lead Member Cllr David A Bithell about the repair figures, he said, “Obviously we had industrial action last year which hampered our ability with repairs. Clearly there’s lots more work to do on repairs.

“Officers are working now on our repairs to bring us up to speed. We have got lots of backlog of repairs, we are prioritising what we do. Obviously with the budget reductions, and we still have to prioritise, but generally, I think they do a good job.

“Can we do better? Yes, and we are working on that. Hopefully we’ll see an action plan later in this year”.

Council Leader Mark Pritchard added, “I know that David wants improvements in there, he’s made it clear. Can we improve? Yes. Will we improve? We have to.

“I think we’re going in the right direction. It is important that we don’t fall back.

“The strike did have an impact. People of Wrexham understood it was just the waste collection, but it was the trades and housing also with a big impact. So, we are catching up.

“I know he is pushing on the stats and he wants improvements, and we want that for all our tenants”.