London Borough of Southwark

Southwark has a housing stock of 55,000 properties occupied by tenants and leaseholders. The stock is ageing and therefore the need for repairs continues to grow.  The council needs a simple and reliable way for customers to report those repairs. The main route for reporting repairs currently is through the council’s telephone contact centre. The service receives up to 1,000 calls per day.

Approximately 50% of calls are to report a new repair, however the rest are customers seeking updates on previously reported repairs, or chasing a poor job. Only around 4% of repairs are reported online.

We want to understand what our customers need when reporting, tracking and getting their repairs fixed. Hackney has carried out some research already, but we want to consolidate, map and review current research available for front ends so we can recognise the gaps and build a better repairs service that is reusable for other authorities.