Almost £2m for greener council homes plan in Barnsley

The management organisation, which looks after 18,500 council homes on behalf of Barnsley Council, revealed how it has performed in the last 12 months, and plans to invest more than £20m to improve homes.

The report states that during 2021/22, Berneslai homes is set to spend £1m on flood resilience in Lundwood, £13.5m on homes standard works, £2m on adaptations, £1.6m on “extensive works”, £70,000 on heating upgrades and £1.9M for zero carbon works such as air source heating, solar panels and insulation.

It adds: “We’re investing in our homes to improve energy efficiency, reduce our carbon footprint and support the council become net carbon zero by 2040.”

There are plans to introduce an online repairs system next summer, so tenants can track, book and change repair appointments easily.

Dan Crossley head of repairs, maintenance and building safety, said: “It’s been a challenging year running the repairs service, but we still managed to deliver against most of our targets, improve our approach to building safety, welcome our new partner Wates and made a start developing our new repair IT system.”

Berneslai Homes hit a number of their targets, including keeping 98 per cent of appointments, and having an average of 8.4 days’ wait for non urgent repairs.

However, some targets were missed – the service aimed to achieve a 94 per cent satisfaction rate for repairs completed, but only hit 88.5 percent.