Sheffield tenants complain about lengthy delays with council housing repairs

They say Sheffield Council repairs took an average of 57 days in October – up to a month longer than Rotherham and Barnsley Councils.

Sheffield Council said it completes 10,000 repairs a month, and emergency repairs within hours, but there has been some delay due to Covid-19.

Liberal Democrat candidate Sophie Thornton said tenants in Jordanthorpe had been forced to move out.

“A couple with a newborn baby had to leave their home because the lack of roof repairs that left their flat absolutely freezing.

“The waiting times are so far behind the rest of the region, it’s horrendous. I know times have been tough recently, but other local authorities have managed to keep up a decent waiting time.”

One tenant, Natalie Tivey, said she had been waiting since last February. “It’s ridiculous, our block flooded and the porch roof has been falling in since last year. I’m disabled and I have elderly neighbours.

“Our entire flat block is freezing, covered in black mould and you never know when the next chunk of plaster will fall from the porch. I would move out if I could.”

Coun Paul Wood, Cabinet member for housing, sincerely apologised to anyone waiting.

He told full council: “If there’s a major breakdown we get out within four hours and urgent repairs are attended to within 24 hours.

“We have a 25 day time span on normal planned repairs but the work in progress repairs do go to 55 days.

“These times have come down significantly over the last 12 months and I would hope they’re going to come down even further.

“The repair service is restricted by safe working practices during Covid. Some programmed work was not allowed to go ahead in the first lockdown and that caused some delays but it is now going ahead so we shouldn’t see the problems we had.

“We do 10,000 repairs a month and 99 per cent are done in line with the national standards.”

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