In July 2007, Radio ‘Five Live’ broadcast a programme criticising the Mears Group, the contractor responsible for carrying out repairs to the homes of Family Mosaic tenants.

The programme suggested that some of our tenants were receiving a poor service from Mears and that Mears was signing off repairs that had not been carried out.  It also claimed that Mears had regularly falsified customer satisfaction figures, weeding out problematic tenants.

Following the broadcast, we appointed a team of external forensic accountants, internal auditors and external chartered surveyors to carry out an independent investigation into these allegations.

This involved a detailed analysis of over 30,000 repair jobs carried out by Mears for Family Mosaic tenants living in the London boroughs of Hackney and Islington.

The investigation found that Mears had not systematically falsified information about the repair service it provides to Family Mosaic.  But it also found that some of our tenants had been let down by the quality of the repairs service.  The authors of the report (click here to view the report) also highlighted the need for improvements to be made to Mears’ computer system, which is used to record information about repairs.

This report has been submitted to the industry’s regulatory body – The Housing Corporation – and Mears has now put in place changes to its computer system at our request.

In addition, last year (July 2007) we wrote to all 7,000 Family Mosaic tenants in Hackney and Islington, to ask them if they had experienced poor service from Mears.

As a result, we appointed a firm of chartered surveyors to investigate 62 complaints of poor service and these are now being individually addressed.

We have also developed an Action Plan to improve the quality of service being provided to our tenants by Mears.  This is now being rolled out and will mean that failure to carry out or complete repairs will be picked up and dealt with earlier.  Regular meetings between Mears, Family Mosaic and our tenants will also help improve communication and further ensure tenants’ needs are being met.

Commenting on the report, Brendan Sarsfield, Chief Executive of Family Mosaic said: “It’s important that our tenants aren’t let down by contractors and that repairs to their homes are done promptly. This investigation has shown that our partner has not been misleading us, as well as help us identify areas for improvements that we've already acted on. Overall, however, we are pleased that the vast majority of our tenants – nearly 80% - report that they are satisfied with the repair service they receive.  It’s my job to try and improve that figure even further.”