The State Government will establish a new one stop ’Maintenance Hub’ within Homes NSW to streamline requests for maintenance under one roof.
Premier Chris Minns said everyone deserved access to safe and secure shelter without having to jump through hoops to ensure essential maintenance was done.
“We acknowledge that there have been flaws in how maintenance has been addressed in the past and it’s our job to fix that, for now and into the future and that’s why we’re overhauling the current system to ensure a better outcome for our residents,” he said.
The State Government said it would overhaul how social housing maintenance was conducted with a new and ‘simpler’ back to basics model that would focus on quality, accountability, better outcomes for tenants and better value for taxpayers.
It said the new model would deliver better results for taxpayers by determining costs through a pre-agreed schedule of rates, and provide better oversight by putting ‘boots on the ground’ with technical and inspection staff to return to the field to improve processes and engage with tenants to realise improved maintenance outcomes.
Homes NSW will triage, scope and issue work orders while the contractors will be the ones to attend site for work delivery.
State MP for East Hills, Kylie Wilkinson, said fixing the maintenance system would “play a vital role in rebuilding our broken housing system and is a strong step in the right direction to creating processes that put people first”.
“For too long residents have had to navigate a heavily bureaucratic and confusing system to have basic maintenance requests addressed,” she said.
Housing repair ‘overhaul’
THE social housing maintenance system which is confusing, disjointed and unworkable, and has left tenants bouncing between departments with requests being stalled by bureaucracies and a lack of accountability, will be overhauled.
