Agenda item

To provide a verbal update on the Out Of Hours Service.

The Strategic Director of Communities introduced the report and explained that there was an incident on the 17 December 2023 where some tenants couldn’t access the Out Of Hours (OOH) service. The Strategic Director of Communities reassured the Committee that the issue had been taken very seriously. The Housing Committee had been briefed the following week and it was felt a verbal update to the Committee was necessary.

The Interim Head of Housing explained in detail the events of the incident and the steps that were taken to manage the situation:

·        The incident on the 17 December was due to exceptional cold weather circumstances. The OOH service providers across the Country experienced the same drastic increase in demand and therefore did not have the capacity to manage all of the incoming calls.

·        Officers on call over the weekend following the incident were out delivering heaters, visiting vulnerable residents or assisting with queries over the phone.

·        Orbis received over 1000 calls, 10% of which were from the same number.

She further updated the committee with the steps that had been put in place since the incident which included:

·        SDC had asked Orbis to put a message on the phoneline when experiencing high levels of calls to provide email and text options to tenants who cannot stay on the line.

·        Standby arrangements were put in place over the Christmas period where at least 4 Officers were on call should Orbis have met any of the thresholds.

·        SDC were looking to provide clarification for tenants, as to what was classed as an emergency and who to contact in certain situations. This would be updated in the current Tenant Handbook and circulated via all communication channels with tenants.

·        Orbis had been asked to not only email SDC once a threshold had been met but to actively contact the SDC Officer on call to alert them.

·        Highlighted relevant information on the SDC website for residents and tenants to refer to when required.

In response to Councillor Pearson, the Interim Head of Housing advised that had the incident taken place on a weekday the OOH service would have had the same issues due to the extreme increase in demand.

Councillor Pearson raised concerns with the air source heat pumps not working at low temperatures. The Interim Head of Housing advised that some of the earliest versions installed struggled to work below minus five degrees however in some situations they had been switched off and could not start at the lower temperature.

In response to Councillor Davies, the Interim Head of Housing agreed:

• To provide further information on the air source heat pumps and whether there was an issue of working below a certain temperature.
• To provide a monthly reporting figures for the Orbis contract.

Councillor Pearcy debated whether it would be useful to understand why some individuals had attempted to contact the OOH service multiple times. He further stated that Orbis should alert SDC earlier than mid-day in order to allow time to coordinate a response.

In response to Councillor Baker, the Interim Head of Housing confirmed that:

·        The OOH service did not include provisions for homelessness that was a separate issue.

·        The OOH contract was managed by the property services team due to the fact that the majority of calls were for repairs. Other services also had their own OOH arrangements.