Sheffield Council’s repair and maintenance backlog faces more than 13,000 outstanding jobs

Council officers said the service had struggled to cope with demand due to the impact of Covid-19, in a recent report.

It stopped all routine repairs and planned works in March 2020 due to the pandemic and only carried out essential work.

During that time, all non-operational staff worked from home and the service faced significant shortages in supply both in terms of materials and labour while only a third of the frontline operations workforce were working at any time.

The service was only fully reinstated a year later on March 30.

Snapshot figures shared in the report show as of that time, there were a total of 9,469 jobs outstanding. By the end of June this stood at 13,775.

Of those outstanding in June, 192 were classed as “urgent and emergency”.

Officers said a detailed recovery plan was in operation to reduce all backlogs by the end of the financial year.

They said: “Progress has been made in targeting the orders over 12 months old but the pent-up demand, held back during lockdown, has been released. There has been a 207.5 percent increase in new orders during 2021/22 and the service has struggled to cope with this volume of demand.”

They said to cope with the exceptional run-rate of new work, the service has planned for an additional 25 percent capacity and currently estimate that, subject to availability, securing these should reduce the backlog by the end of the year.