Councillor Tom Simon, the Liberal Democrat leader of the opposition
A BUNGLE in the Town Hall’s housing department left 400 tenants waiting for workmen to show up to appointments that had accidentally been wiped from the diary that manages repairs.
The computer glitch emerged after Leader of the Opposition, Belsize ward Lib Dem Councillor Tom Simon, was approached by a tenant who had been waiting for a leak to be fixed.
He said: “I was doing casework in the autumn and I had been told that a contractor had not shown up when they were meant to. I asked officers why. They revealed that they had moved to a new IT system to book appointments, and a ‘small number’ of jobs had gone missing.”
Last year, the Housing Ombudsman issued a highly critical report of Camden’s housing repairs team, citing missed appointments and communication as particularly poor.
The report prompted the Town Hall to move to the new IT system – a system that saw the 400 appointments wiped.
Cllr Simon delved further into the issue and discovered the 400 booked in urgent repair jobs had disappeared.
He said: “They said they had written to everyone affected – but 400 missed appointments is not a small insignificant number. It is not a good attitude.”
He added that the appointments represented people taking time off work, waiting in all day – and that if a repair was not completed in good time, it could make the job bigger and more expensive.
He said: “It shows a poor attitude towards tenants and the importance of repairs. It undermines confidence in the system if someone is booked in but doesn’t show up. It means yet more delays in getting problems fixed. How many people waiting for repairs to their home got the letters and were able to rearrange their lives for the next appointment?”
He added tenants and leaseholders already lacked confidence in the council’s repair service.
Cllr Simon said: “This has set back a substantial number of jobs. Did they not test the system properly first? It just shows a contempt and a poor attitude towards solving repair issues and I will raise this at the full council meeting on Monday.”
A Camden Council spokesperson said they had worked quickly to get missed jobs back on schedule.
The spokesperson added: “We are committed to improving our services for tenants and as part of this we have modernised our systems to make it easier for people to book repairs. This was a big system change and during the switch, a minor technical issue caused a limited number of cancellations, with the majority of appointments transferred successfully to our new system.
We acted swiftly to identify, directly contact over the phone and in writing, and rebook all of those affected as soon as we spotted it.
“We understand the frustration and inconvenience this may have caused some residents and sincerely apologise for any disruption. We remain committed to providing a reliable and efficient repairs service, with the IT team making changes to address the root cause and continuing to monitor the system closely.”
