IT system is slowing down repairs for council homes

West Dunbartonshire Council bosses said it was badly in need of replacement but the plan would not see new live updates on repairs introduced until 2017-2018.

At the housing and communities committee last week, officials and politicians confronted figures showing delayed to non-emergency repairs have continued to get worse over the past three years.

The average time to complete non-emergency repairs is supposed to be eight days, but in 2015/16, it was 10.58 days.

The percentage of repairs appointments kept also fell slightly.

Martin Feeney, repairs and maintenance manager, told the meeting: "We recognise we have had a dropping performance in the past year.

"We can only get four [appointments] per trade per area. We do need to improve to get on to the level we once were at."

In response to questions from councillors, Mr Feeney said a new system would be in place for 2017/18 allowing a resident who reports a repair to see its progress in real time online. And workers can update jobs by phone rather than having to file paperwork.

He said: "We see it's a fundamental change to the way we do our service. We are not sitting on our laurels waiting for that.

"It's going to change completely the way we do things and it's going to save money."

Scheduled repairs to homes currently get lumped in with non-emergency call-outs, further affecting figures. Councillors were told this will change under the new system as well.

Mr Feeney said: "We do group all repairs together, one of the limitations of the current system.

"If you separated out planned repairs, it would reduce the time for the non-emergency repairs substantially. We are going to try to isolate them.

"Our current technologies are 20-30 years old and we need to improve that."

Council leader Martin Rooney said it was important to get reporting accurate. Mr Feeney replied that, compared to other councils who can press a button and get the data, WDC has to sort manually.