At ROCC, we take the health and safety of your tenants seriously. As suppliers of housing technology solutions for local authorities, maintenance contractors and housing associations, we believe the onus is on us to create market-leading products that help you keep tenant satisfaction high.
For social housing providers involved in the delivery of repairs and maintenance, the spotlight is on you more than ever before. The time is now to put the welfare of tenants first.
Here, we take a look at the government guidance for the Housing Health and Safety Rating System and explain how ROCC’s best-in-class software can help.
What is the Housing Health and Safety Rating System?
The Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) was produced in light of the Housing Act 2004, which was established to change the way local authorities assess housing conditions. The state of a property is now assessed using a risk assessment approach, called the HHSRS, so potential hazards in a home are significantly reduced.
In accordance with the guidance, the conditions of a property need to be reviewed regularly to see where and how they can be improved and ensure homes are made safer. The Act also provides local authorities with new duties and powers to tackle poor housing conditions.
How can ROCC help?
Fortunately, ROCC is here to support you. Our system can automatically triage, diagnose and prioritise reported issues that are linked to tenant health and safety. This enables housing organisations to ensure repairs and maintenance that directly have an impact on tenant health are resolved as quickly as possible.
Let’s take a look at how ROCC can help ensure you adhere to the HHSRS in more detail.
- Quick diagnosis: Our software can automatically identify the correct type of repair required. This is customisable to each customer’s requirements, ensuring potential hazards are identified correctly at the first point of contact.
- Predefined priorities: For each repair or inspection, a predefined priority ensures that once the job has been raised it will be automatically scheduled and booked within the required timescales. This means each job meets the HHSRS requirement, or for damp and mould, the Awaab’s law legislation.
- Joined-up approach: Additional work can be raised and linked to an initial inspection to ensure work is grouped together and tracked if it all relates to the same issue.
- Automatic priorities: Different priorities can be automatically determined for the different types of follow-on or remedial works required once an inspection has been completed. These are automatically scheduled and booked within the predefined timescales, so your staff do not have to be relied upon to remember when the work needs to be done.
- Flexibility: The system can recognise that certain priority jobs are more important and time can be “reserved” to ensure that high-priority work is accommodated in the operatives’ diaries in a timely manner. This helps to ensure timescales are met.
- Full audit history: ROCC gives a full audit history against each job, so a landlord can easily show they have attended a property (even if they were unable to gain access) to carry out any remedial works. The audit also applies to jobs sent out to the ROCC contractor portal if the landlord chooses to outsource the work.
- Real-time tracking: With our system, operative tracking goes a step further and can evidence on a map the location of the operative when the job was completed or a no access attempt was made.
- Post-work inspections: Part of the guidance suggests that once the work has been completed to remedy a hazard then a review needs to be completed. ROCC can handle these post-inspections and record that they have been carried out.
- Job monitoring: The ROCC system constantly monitors the works that are required and automatically ensures they are prioritised to be completed on time. On the rare occasion the system cannot guarantee works will be completed, it will proactively alert your team so they can take action.
- Asbestos checks: The ROCC solution holds an asbestos register for each property. This information is available to all users and subcontractors for health and safety reasons.
- Customisable attributes: Users can create customisable attributes that are linked to each dwelling to identify any HHSRS hazards which may have been identified at a property. This means they are easy to report on and relevant information is provided regarding the hazards to all system users.
With the help of ROCC, meeting the requirements set out in the Housing Health and Safety Rating System doesn’t have to be daunting. Our industry-leading housing software does all the heavy lifting for you, so you can rest assured knowing that you’re adhering to government guidelines.
By investing in ROCC and streamlining your processes, you’re not only able to massively improve business operations, but also ensure your tenants’ health and safety are prioritised.
Get in touch with a member of our team today to see how ROCC’s software can revolutionise your organisation.
