Compliance works are critical for social housing providers delivering repairs and maintenance, ensuring legal adherence, tenant safety and operational efficiency. They need to comply with strict regulations, but tracking and setting up cyclical and compliance work with regular repairs and maintenance programmes is complex.
When it comes to gas safety, electrical standards, fire safety, water hygiene and so on, failure to meet standards can result in legal action and reputational damage.
Worryingly, many organisations manually schedule these jobs using complicated spreadsheets that only one or two individuals understand. When errors are found or a job needs to be altered, complex re-arrangements must be made, delaying the programme and the subsequent missing of KPIs. Cyclical jobs, such as gas and electrical servicing, are also critical for compliance and need additional information stored against the work and the property, including service history and certificates.
Other compliance work is more difficult to schedule. For instance, emergency light tests might be needed every month with a special test every year, negating the need for the monthly test in that month, and fire alarm tests might require tests every six months with a yearly test. Similar scheduling is required for PAT testing, asbestos surveys, extractor fan maintenance and smoke detector tests.
Tenant safety is a top priority and effective compliance management helps prevent hazards and ensures properties meet safety standards to protect residents. This is especially important when dealing with vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and disabled.
Here are some of the other benefits of good compliance management:
- Reduces long-term costs by identifying and addressing issues early.
- Prevents expensive emergency repairs and legal liabilities.
- Reduces human error.
- Ensures inspections, certifications and maintenance tasks are completed on time.
- Maintains funding and regulatory ratings – essential for social housing providers reliant on government support.
- Enhances the overall quality of service.
How can ROCC help?
Fortunately, ROCC’s Core housing maintenance management solution is on hand to help. Its compliance features include an automated module that removes the complexity of managing compliance jobs, freeing up resource time in back offices and removing the need for complex spreadsheets.
ROCC Core ensures gas servicing and electrical inspections are completed effectively through automated scheduling, compliance tracking and post-inspection processes:
Automated scheduling and compliance
- The system auto-generates gas and electrical inspection schedules based on defined cycles (e.g., yearly, quarterly).
- Jobs are automatically created and scheduled well in advance, ensuring timely compliance with legal safety requirements.
Real-time monitoring and reporting
- Operatives can generate compliance forms such as Landlord Gas Safety Records (LGSRs) and Electrical Installation Condition Reports (EICR) directly from their device.
- The system flags inspections needed and no-access incidents, escalating them automatically.
- Data is stored in a centralised asset register, ensuring historical tracking of all works completed and all future works needed.
Quality control and post-inspection
- Compliance works are randomly selected for automated post-inspection to ensure quality compliance and ROCC customers have the ability to override these features on a per-situation basis (for example checking all certificates issued by a certain operative or reviewing all works carried out against certain assets).
- Failed services are automatically linked to a breakdown repair, allowing the operative to complete both in one visit.
These processes ensure safe, compliant and efficient servicing of all gas and electrical systems across properties.
Peter Luck, Business and Operations Director, ROCC, commented: “Housing compliance works are crucial to ensuring tenant safety, legal adherence and the longevity of housing stock.
“These critically important works help prevent hazards such as fire risks, gas leaks and structural failures while ensuring properties meet building regulations and health standards. Effective compliance reduces liability for housing providers, enhances tenant wellbeing and improves operational efficiency by proactively addressing maintenance needs.
“The safety and wellbeing of residents should never be trusted to a manual spreadsheet and a comprehensive system managing these works is essential for all housing providers.”
You can find out more about ROCC Core’s compliance features here or get in touch with a member of our customer success team.
