A SENIOR Labour councillor has slammed the record of housing repairs provider Morrison at a council meeting last night.
Stanford councillor Terry Hipsey spoke at the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny committee where he catalogued “Complaint after complaint after complaint”.
Morrison PLC were awarded the £22 million contract in March 2010 by the ruling Conservative group. Labour fought bitterly to have the contract “called in” as they were unhappy with a number of aspects in the contract.
At the time, Morrison promised that they would bring:
“Improved service and more repairs ‘right first time’
– Improved efficiency
– Improvements to the Thurrock Trade School
– Support for local businesses
– Creating job and apprenticeship opportunities
However since then, many councillors have found their in-tray full of complaints from council tenants underwhelmed, harassed and upset at the service they have been provided with.
Councillor Hipsey said: “In these difficult times, we must provide value for money but from the evidence provided Morrison are not providing this.
“Among the complaints have been: Leaving clients in all day waiting and not turning up; excuse after excuse for not completing or doing a job; not doing jobs properly”.
A number of small companies have also contacted YourThurrock re problems with invoices but have declined to go on the record for for fear of losing contracts.
Councillor Hipsey reminded councillors and officers that housing customers were also voters.
He said: “We will all be back out canvassing for votes in a few months. These are the type of issues which the voter will hold us to account”.
Back in March, Conservative portfolio holder for Housing, cllr Tunde Ojetola explained that one of the reasons for Morrison being awarded the contract was to produce a streamling effect.
He said: “The current system employs multiple contractors, and very often jobs are not completed at the first visit. It is also very difficult to utilise new technologies, such as PDAs and texting ahead to customers, when there is more than one contractor involved.”
However, the agenda at last nights (Tuesday) meeting detailed that even after six months:
“There is no real-time IT interface between the Council, Vertex and Morrison. The manual system in place has significant limitations. A new IT
system will be in place by February 2011 that will allow the Council and Morrison to have access to the same information and allow real time
management and monitoring. In the mean-time, there will be a lack of real-time performance data until the new system is implemented.
“Secondly there are a high proportion of repair requests being inaccurately logged as urgent. Morrison have located two technical staff in the Council’s
Contact Centre to provide immediate technical support thereby ensuring requests are logged appropriately”.
Councillor Hipsey is not a lone voice in relaying his concerns. Conservative councillor for Stanford East and Corringham Town, Phil Anderson informed full council last month that there were a number of real concerns from his constituents while Tilbury councillor Lynn Worrall also stressed that there has also been a number of complaints in the Tilbury area.
YourThurrock will be putting the concerns to Morrison this week.
This contract is designed to give shareholders a return on their investments, not a service to householders.
The intracacies of breaking down areas in to smaller working units is the biggest failing, the call centre, inspectors, surveyors should all be one.
Call centre process jobs, sometimes twice or not at all (depending on the time of the day, I suspect), the inspectors involvement is getting less, Morrisons supervisors taking on this role, then who controls the process for jobs processed twice (say a month apart) the extra carbon footprint, cost and time wasted, could see works neccessary not being undertaken, poorly organised. When called to site the surveyors have been issued the same works, with visits from surveyors on two consecutive days for the same problem, both having differing opinions.
On site idiosyncrasies, often sees tradesman challenging what they have been sent to do, supervisors having their opinion, sometimes works aborted or a compromise, often meaning a revisit to complete works, or a revist by an inspector or a surveyor.
I have heard of tradesman arriving the day before, others not turning up at all, a householder being without a shower for over a week as different contractors scratched there heads to come to a conclusion.+-++
Yes it does need sorting