• IN response to the two recent letters in the New Journal, we’d like to comment on issues raised (We’re feeling the cold and feeling forgotten, March 1; and Where does the rent go? March 15).

The recent very cold weather meant that we have received a significant increase in calls about faulty boilers and burst pipes. This exceptionally high demand has meant that on some occasions we haven’t been able to offer the standards of service expected from us.

Where a resident has told us about a poor service we are working hard to put things right for them as quickly as possible. Following the March 15 letter we are sorry that our resident feels that our services haven’t been right.

We were unaware of a lot of the issues raised – as only two of the repairs had been reported to us and we had no complaints about the quality of these or any historical repairs.

After seeing the letter we have been in contact with our resident and made arrangements for our senior building surveyor to visit the property and put a plan in place to address any outstanding issues.

To reduce the inconvenience to our resident our pest control officer will also be attending at the same time to look at the pest issues and how we might address them.

Our vision is to provide homes and places where people are proud to live and so our residents, our housing and the services we provide are important to us.

We try to follow up on any negative feedback we receive and we are committed to learning from complaints to continue to improve the service we provide.

RICHARD PARKIN
Director of Operations
Origin Housing