Councillor Mohammed Really Must Do Better

Councillor Mohammed , we hear, is “really disappointed” by the findings of a report that shows Newham Housing Department’s complaints about repairs have almost doubled in a year. What’s more, some 62% of the complaints were upheld.

His response to the debacle is to emote and suggest that he knows how the tenants feel.

We are waiting to hear why this is actually the fault of Robin Wales. Mohammed has only been in post for four years, so clearly the failures have nothing to do with him.

The Recorder quotes Mohammed as saying “I really want to work hard with our tenant leaseholders to improve our care service and to improve the engagement that we do with our residents.”

Okay, so what has he been doing for the last four years while raking in the best part of £49,000 a year in allowances?

He might want to improve the “care service”, does he mean “repairs”, but his tenants might like to know what he proposes to do. What we get is a word soup packed with journeys, of “change” and “improvement”.

“Hopefully when we do that six months (sic) review, we should be on that journey of change, journey of improvement and making sure that we respond to residents really, really quickly – and do the first-time fixes with our repair service.” (it’s such a mess, it sounds like the mayor wrote it for him.)

What does “respond” mean here? Getting it right first time seems like an admirable goal, but tenants might have more confidence if he told them how he was going to ensure it. Councillor Mohammed appears to put his faith in “resident experience” teams, they will presumably emote with tenants as well. He could of course read the data from the report, it aint that difficult.

The Recorder posts this graph from the report. This shows that 478 of the upheld complaints were about delays. Although his apparent commitment to getting it right first time is welcome, it will not do anything in respect of the overwhelming number of complaints which were about a delay in service.

Can we offer a suggestion? Get your managers to work out what needs to be done to get plumbers, fitters and carpenters out to residents quickly with an instruction to stay on the site until the job is done!

It seems he just needed to fill up some space with words. It didn’t matter what he said, he wouldn’t be challenged by his colleagues and they probably hadn’t read the report either.

Newham Recorder saves the worst till last. They note that Newham has become the third worst borough in London for complaints behind Haringey and Lambeth.

“Ultimately, Newham Council received the highest number of complaints for housing repairs, followed by parking and enforcement, housing allocations, housing services, highways and traffic, housing needs, temporary accommodation, anti-social behaviour and nuisance, waste and parks and open spaces. 

“It comes after data recently published by the Local Government Ombudsman found Newham Council ranked third for the most housing complaints in London between 2016 and 2022. 

“Of the complaints for that period, 69.32 per cent were upheld.”