Driving Efficiency Through Proactive Planning
With Awaab’s law swiftly moving into phase 2, Sureserve’s latest report, Back in Control: A bolder vision for tackling social housing repairs and maintenance, is a much-needed call for change in the social housing sector.
The rising costs of repairs
In 2024/25, social landlords in England spent over £10bn on repairs and maintenance. Though the renewed national focus on damp and mould spurred by Awaab’s Law was warranted and welcome, it landed at a time when repair costs were rising at unprecedented rates: 42% higher than what they were before the pandemic. FYI, repair costs continue to escalate.
Damp, mould and fire safety pressures are major contributors to the mounting budgets. Complaints, too, continue to rise year on year. When issues are tackled reactively, we all know what happens: repeat visits, frustrated residents, the need to move residents out of their homes due to health risks and community budgets swallowed by emergencies rather than long-term solutions.
The Back in Control report sets social housing a clear challenge: how can landlords improve property quality while reducing costs? To get underneath that, we surveyed organisations across the country, from large national housing associations to small local authorities. Their message to us was clear. The sector sees the value of shifting towards proactive, preventative approaches. There’s broad agreement that a planned model could save significant money, improve outcomes for residents and reduce the stress placed on frontline teams.
But knowing the direction of travel and having the capacity to get there are two very different things.
Getting from here to there
Landlords told us they recognise the need to move away from reactive repairs. Yet they remain constrained by operational realities: stretched teams, compliance pressures, financial limitations, a lack of data and fragmented systems. Many described the frustration of wanting to invest in prevention but being repeatedly pulled back into the urgent and the immediate.
As one Head of Maintenance put it:
“The entire service model is predicated on resident reported issues. We lack early warning systems that don’t require massive capital investment. Even with Awaab’s Law driving policy, the operational reality hasn’t shifted – repairs budgets are consumed by crisis management, leaving no capacity for prevention.”
Phil Tyler, Chief Information Officer at Sureserve, made another salient point during his speech at the House of Lords on 9 March: “The new regulatory timeframes are necessary, but they can unintentionally push behaviour toward short-term fixes, optimising for speed of response rather than lasting outcomes for residents.”
This report looks at how we can break that cycle as well as how smarter, more connected and proactive approaches can help the sector move from firefighting to forward planning.
Sureserve believes the sector must now set a clear strategic goal to drive the long-term shift that residents need.
Our proposal: by 2030, is to rebalance repairs spending from today’s 70:30 reactive/preventative split to 30:70 in favour of prevention.
This would unlock sustainable cost management, improve compliance and deliver healthier homes.
We’re calling on landlords and technology innovators to partner with us to learn from our existing pilot schemes and adopt new proactive, data-driven maintenance models. Learn more about our Healthy homes check, making every access work harder. link to Healthy Homes check page
Only through collaboration across the supply chain and the sector can we shift from crisis response to prevention…and ultimately deliver even more safer, warmer, healthier homes for residents while spending far less on repairs and maintenance.
Ending his speech at the House of Lords, Phil Tyler wrapped it well. In reference to content in the Back in Control report, the Chief Information Officer said, “If we do those things, the sector can meet the letter of the law and the spirit of it: protecting residents and preventing harm, rather than just moving faster around the same loop.”