THURROCK Council has responded following a Thurrock Nub News story expressing significant concerns about its homes repairs scheme and the poor standard of work being carried out by its maintenance partners.

Our story, published on Monday (22 March) told of a woman who lives in Brisbane House in Tilbury who had to live for three weeks with water dripping through her ceiling.

The tipping point in taking it into the public domain was the crass comment by a council officer "Use an umbrella indoors".

It appears some council officers have a penchant for glib remarks. In the wake of our story, as a significant number of council tenants raised issues with us, a tower resident from Tilbury told Nub News: "I had no heating or hot water when I lived in this block for a few weeks. I was told to wash my son in a bucket!"

Details of those problems highlighted to us have been passed to the council, which nevertheless is standing firm behind the conviction that it offers 'high quality housing services' to its tenants.

That is despite acknowledging around one in ten of the hundreds, if not thousands, of repairs it carries out were not completed to the satisfaction of home occupants.

In our story we detailed how the council's contracting process means that great weight is put on cheapness and discounted rates of work in the first instance – rather than balanced project management over the lifetime of a repair. In short, we suggested the council's policy was fix it on the cheap, worry about it later.

The council denies that is its policy and says its procurement system follows all the 'necessary protocols'.

However, no councillor has gone on record with the official statement, or putting a name to comments in it. The statement reads: "Thurrock Council is committed to providing high quality housing services to residents through strong working partnerships with reputable contractors.

"Providing high quality services such as repair and refurbishment works at council owned properties remains a priority for the council. This involves ensuring that all works carried out to tenants' homes across the borough follow the necessary protocols, are procured for the most effective cost to the tax payer possible and are completed to the highest standard for our residents.

"The high quality, long lasting repair and refurbishment works that our contractors provide continue to be monitored and reviewed, as we strive to provide our residents with the best quality of life whilst living in Thurrock.

"Some repair work is sub-contracted by the main contractors which is standard practice, and the council undertakes quality inspections of works completed to ensure they meet the required specification in terms of workmanship and materials.

"The council also carries out independent tenant satisfaction surveys with a statistically relevant proportion of tenants who have had a repair completed which includes key metrics such as satisfaction that the repair was completed right first time, satisfaction with the quality of repair and satisfaction with being kept informed.

"The resulting feedback is regularly analysed with the results and feedback consistently reviewed as part of contractual governance with contractors to highlight potential service improvements and to discuss lessons learnt.

"Between April 2020 and February 2021, 91.9% of tenants surveyed were satisfied with the overall repairs service they received. In addition to this 89.2% of tenants were satisfied their repair was completed right first time, 94.1% of tenants were satisfied with the quality of the repair and 91.7% of tenants were satisfied they were kept informed of the progress of their repair.

"Should residents have any queries or wish to report issues relating to housing services they have received, they can contact [email protected] to receive support from qualified surveyors and appropriately trained officers regarding the work of our contractors."

Concerns about the state of the borough's high rise flats was highlighted in our story last December which can be read here.