Agenda item

Councillor Ben Coleman, Cabinet Member for Resident Satisfaction, explained that when he had been Chair of the Economic Regeneration, Housing and the Arts PAC, residents had made it very clear to him that were very unhappy with the service provided by Mitie and that they felt ignored by the council. Councillor Coleman explained that parts of the contract with Mitie were good, but that in his view the monitoring of their performance had not been good enough. It had taken longer than he had hoped to make progress on the issue but a trial of a new way of monitoring satisfaction had now started. This trial was based on new software called rant and rave which sent text messages to a third of residents who had either made contact with the call centre, had a visit from Mitie staff or had a job completed. The new system gave the council more information about what residents thought of the service, and also gave Mitie instant feedback on work which allowed them to solve problems for residents and take action where issues with staff were identified.

John D’Souza, Mitie Partnering Manager, explained that Rant and Rave had given Mitie’s management a lot of information which they could use to improve their services; for example, residents had been particularly upset about door entry system and TV aerial repairs taking a long time and so Mitie were trying to respond faster to these as they were having a significant impact on residents. Mr D’Souza said that the response rate to text messages was only about 20%, and that Mitie wanted to try to improve this; they were also trying to get telephone numbers from residents so that they could be contacted.

 A resident raised a concern about scaffolding at Meadowbank sheltered housing scheme having been left up for months with work not being completed. Nilavra Mukerji agreed to look into the issue. The Chair explained that the PAC would be considering an item on scaffolding at its December meeting and that views on the council’s use of scaffolding would be very welcome then.

Roz O’Connell felt that the rant and rave project was very helpful in that it allowed Mitie to fix issues quickly. She said that it was important that residents responded so that a true picture of performance could be built up.

Gwen Cook said that she felt that having a new way of monitoring Mitie was not enough to improve the service. She explained that Mitie had taken over a year to resolve a problem in her flat and that she had been forced to make lots of phone calls and go through the formal complaints process to get this resolved. Councillor Coleman said that Ms Cook’s experience of Mitie was completely unacceptable, and it sounded like the communication by Mitie had been very poor. He explained that in his view the council’s contractors represented the council and so apologised to Ms Cook. He said that Mitie were committed to improving their performance and that whilst he accepted that rant and rave would not resolve all of the issues he hoped it would make a big difference. Marcus Cox, Director at Mitie, apologised to Gwen Cook for the poor service she had received. He explained that he wanted to meet with her so that he could find out how things had gone so badly wrong. He would feedback what he had learned to Councillors Homan and Coleman.

Pauline Hutchinson said that the lights on Cheeseman’s Terrace were not being repaired. Marilyn Mackie felt that lights were not noticed because estate inspections were not done at night. Roz O’Connell explained that the repairs working group had set up a sub-committee on lighting, and that that group would be carrying out a survey of the council’s estate lights; these meetings were being delayed because of officers not being available. Councillor Coleman asked Paul Monforte to make sure that the group was properly supported. Councillor Phibbs felt that it was frustrating that issues with lighting continued to arise as they had been a problem for some years. John D’Souza explained that at Cheeseman’s Terrace some of the lights were connected to the highways street lighting system and so the issue there was more complicated.

A resident asked whether rant and rave would be expanded to cover other contractors and services. Nilavra Mukerji explained that if the trial was successful the scheme might be extended, however, it wouldn’t work so well in areas where it was harder to tell if a service had been delivered well or not.

Thomas Flynn said that he thought the repairs working group should be given responsibility for scrutinising Mitie’s performance. Nilavra Mukerji explained that he felt the group couldn’t effectively carry out scrutiny as well as do all of the great work it was to improve services. He said that the council was looking to introduce mystery shopping to ensure that services were being delivered well.

Roz O’Connell said that she felt that the complaints system needed to be improved. Councillor Coleman agreed and said that the council was already looking at how to improve its handling of complaints.

The chair thanked residents for their contribution and said that he hoped that repairs would be discussed again to see if rant and rave really did make a difference to satisfaction.