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When your social housing stock runs into the thousands, keeping up to date with electrical checks can be a challenge. That challenge can be even greater when some of your properties are occupied by vulnerable tenants. We’ve been involved in numerous projects where tenants might…

• Be unable (or refuse) to answer the door to a pre-arranged appointment

• Deliberately avoid testing teams to claim any ‘missed appointment’ compensation on offer

• Have special conditions imposed upon anyone visiting their home (e.g. workers must only visit in pairs, or not leave any tools unguarded)

All of these are issues which can delay electrical testing projects and prevent a landlord from meeting its obligations. But there are ways to encourage more tenants to respond to appointment requests.

Eyes on the prize

It’s amazing the difference an incentive can make to the success of appointment booking. When we offered tenants the opportunity to be entered into a prize draw for three 50” TVs on condition that electrical engineers were able to successfully complete their appointment unhindered, testing success rates rocketed.

The project, which lasted a year and involved several thousand north west homes, was broken into phases, and we offered a TV prize draw in each phase, ensuring that, for a relatively modest outlay, we could reduce far more costly missed appointments.

“Social landlords are naturally on the side of their tenants, so it can be a time consuming and costly challenge for contractors to shoulder the burden of proof in demonstrating that appointments have been kept. All of that admin can get in the way of completing the project, which benefits no one,” says Evolution’s Dean Coyne.

“Our experience in the social housing sector has enabled us to think around issues like these, and come up with innovative solutions that ensure more projects progress successfully, keeping landlords and tenants happy.”

To find out more about how we can speed up the electrical testing of your housing stock, please contact us.