Examination of Witness (Questions 640
- 650)
WEDNESDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2000
MR JOHN
WILSON
Mr Hepburn
640. We were told by the families associations
that there was a possibility of being asked to move. That is the
problem. What are you doing to alleviate that?
(Mr Wilson) Planning further ahead. That is the answer
to that really: giving people the maximum notice. Service families
move enough because of the nature of service life without having
unnecessary moves put on them by the Defence Housing Executive.
We are very conscious of that. What we need to do is to plan earlier,
to make sure that where possible we move incoming families into
modernised properties so that they will not have to be disturbed
again, but inevitably, with 20,000 or 22,000 moves a year, it
is a major exercise.
641. The conditions of the sale of the estate
to Annington Homes require a minimum number of houses to be handed
back at various points in time. Has this forced you to move people
and surrender quarters which you would rather have kept?
(Mr Wilson) No, not at all. The Ministry of Defence
has total discretion over which houses it retains and which it
releases. When the sale was negotiated, the base case envisaged
that about 1,000 houses a year would be released to Annington
Homes over a 25 year period. The minimum guaranteed release over
that same period was 13,200 houses, I think. We are running ahead
of that minimum release and we are actually running ahead of the
1,000 houses per annum figure. We are disposing of houses because
we no longer require them, not because we are obliged to do so
under the terms of the Annington Homes contract.
Laura Moffatt
642. We know that you have had particular standards
for family satisfaction in homes. Some people describe those as
modest. Are you meeting even those modest standards?
(Mr Wilson) Yes, I believe we are. As far as our repairs
are concerned, when we do a repair we leave a customer satisfaction
slip with the occupant and we ask that occupant to return it to
us. As is the way of these things, relatively few do get returned
to us. The return rate is perhaps 15-16%. Last year, the returns
we received showed that 91.4% of repairs were done to satisfaction.
In the mid-year for this year, the rate is 92.3% to satisfaction,
so it is actually quite high and improving. If one looks at whether
we hit the targets for repairs, last year our target for emergencies
which is within 24 hours was 95% and we hit 95%. For urgent repairs,
our target was 90% within five days and we were below that. We
were 78-79%. For routine repairs, our target was 90% and we achieved
90%. We have put a lot of work into improving those figures still
further. At the mid-year points, we were still hitting the 95%
target for emergencies. For the urgent repairs, we were up to
88% compared to the 90% target and, for the routine repairs within
two months, we were up to 96% compared to a 90% target. I believe
these figures are very good and improving. If one looks at the
complaints which the DHE receives, the rate of complaints also
has reduced by 13% this year compared to last year. I really believe
that a lot of the work that has been put in by my staff across
the country is now paying dividends.
643. That is interesting and heartening to hear.
If there is dissatisfaction, how do families feed that back? You
say you leave a note for them to say it is not great or it is
wonderful or whatever it happens to be, but how do you evaluate
that if you start to see that there is general dissatisfaction
in a certain area? Do you use that feedback?
(Mr Wilson) Yes, we do. We have contacts with the
service families in particular. Obviously we have contacts with
the units and stations the whole time in the course of MoD business.
As far as the families are concerned, we have very good relationships
with the three Service families organisations. The chairmen of
each of these associations sit in attendance at our joint customer
board, which is attended by one star officers in the three services.
We operate a service families housing advisory panel, which meets
six times a year at varying locations around the country. There
was one last week which Mrs Dooding behind me attended at Blandford,
where we explore all the concerns of families. As part of that
process, when we visit the units, we have an open forum and at
Blandford something like 50 families turned up and expressed concerns
they had about the repair service, the condition of the properties,
when their properties were due to be upgraded and so on. That
was a very lively session indeed which lasted about one and a
half hours.
644. I have been to a few of those. I know what
you mean. Is there formal tenant representation on any of these
forums or do you just turn up and hope that members will come?
How do other tenants know that their views are being properly
represented?
(Mr Wilson) The services run family consultative groups
across the country and there are over 200 of these. My staff attend
those at a local level and take a note of the points which are
made. I and my directors make a point of attending a number of
those across the year ourselves. I have been to four or five I
think over the last year. We listen very hard to what they have
to say because it help us to prioritise where we put the money.
At the end of the day DHE is in the business of sustaining and
retaining service families to support operational commitments.
If we do not listen to the families then we are sunk, so we listen
to them very carefully indeed.
Dr Lewis
645. My question is about service to families.
The satisfaction targets which the DHE sets itself seem rather
modest. You want to have less than 17% of families reporting dissatisfaction
with the standard of their property and less than 21% reporting
dissatisfaction with the standard of service from DHE while they
are in occupancy. Would you agree that these targets for measuring
Service family satisfaction with their homes and with your service
to them can be described as modest and are you meeting them?
(Mr Wilson) I think they are realistic bearing in
mind the poor condition of a lot of the stock which we inherited.
If you ask somebody, "Are you completely satisfied with the
service?", I think very few would say "Yes", not
least as a lever to make us improve. If one looks at the statistics
we are improving. The satisfaction surveys, by the way, are conducted
completely independently of DHE by the DERA and the dissatisfaction
with DHE's service was found to be 24.8% in 1998, and in 1999
20.2%, so there was a considerable year on year improvement which
we would aim to build on.
646. What is your mechanism for recording complaints
and lack of satisfaction and who audits the figures?
(Mr Wilson) The formal complaints are logged on registered
files and the progress of those reports is logged. Last year,
1999-2000, we received 572 complaints of which 341 related to
maintenance and repairs. In the first six months of this year
we have logged 249 complaints, 146 of which relate to repairs.
That is something like a 13% improvement compared to last year.
The results of these figures are examined very carefully by our
Joint Customer Board. On the Joint Customer Board all three Services
are represented at one star level and, as I said earlier, the
three families' organisations sit in attendance at those, so they
receive the statistics and monitor them three or four times a
year.
647. Moving on to the problem of the supply
of larger homes which the Families' Association have identified
as a worry, what steps is the DHE taking to provide suitable accommodation
for larger families, taking account of the effects of second marriages
which of course result in many families including stepchildren?
(Mr Wilson) DHE recognises that there is a trend towards
larger families and there is also an aspiration towards larger
houses. When we dispose of properties to Annington Homes or for
sale what we have concentrated on is disposing of two-bedroomed
houses and the smaller three-bedroomed houses. There has been
a history of a shortage of four-bedroomed houses and larger houses,
as you point out. We retain basically all the four-bedroomed houses
and in new builds we have a richer mix of four-bedroomed and three-bedroomed
houses. At a number of locations across the country for the families
which require more than four bedrooms we have a policy of what
we call "knock-throughs", so we basically put a door
between two properties. In some cases we completely change the
layout of the houses in order to provide tailor-made bigger houses.
I visited one at Helensburgh recently which is a superb modernisation.
We have at least 45 of these "knock-throughs" across
the country.
648. Finally, would you envisage the problems
which you encounter in the DHE as becoming insurmountable if the
Ministry of Defence decided to recognise unmarried partners?
(Mr Wilson) At the moment there is no policy to recognise
unmarried partners. That is a matter for Ministers. Clearly if
there were such a policy it would increase the demand for Service
housing.
649. Could you manage to cope with that?
(Mr Wilson) It would depend very much on the terms
under which some change might be made. It would be difficult for
me to forecast how that would affect the demand situation without
knowing those details.
650. You do not have any idea of the scale of
the problem?
(Mr Wilson) No, I do not.
Chairman: Thank you very much. We appreciate
what you have said. If there are any useful points you would like
to raise with us or any documentation please seek authorisation
from the MoD first because they do not like unilateral transmission
of information without them having a look at it. I am sure you
know that. It was very pleasant. Thank you so much.
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