Skip Surveillance: When Controls Start Replacing Trust

Well, this week I had planned to write about the stigma faced by tradespeople working in social housing, following a recent conversation with a former colleague. But, as is often the case with my writing, I saw something last week and read an article recently that pushed it further down the list.

On reflection, though, what I came across actually reinforces the point I was planning to make. Once again, it shows how the behaviour of a minority of tradespeople ends up defining the reputation of the majority.

Last week I visited a builders’ merchant in an area I hadn’t worked in before. The branch had a managed services counter for a local housing association with its own direct labour organisation (DLO). For those unfamiliar with managed services, it’s a dedicated arrangement where a particular builders’ merchant effectively becomes an extension of the landlord’s repairs operation. As well as selling materials over the counter, the merchant manages stock, orders and deliveries for the housing association, allowing operatives to collect the materials they need for their jobs. The general public and operatives can use the counters in some merchants too but it’s normally if you can’t find what you are looking for in the main shop which is often the case.

I went into the managed services area where two operatives working for the DLO were already at the counter and another two from another organisation walked in behind me. One of them collected his materials before saying to the counter assistant, “I just need to drop some rubbish off.”

Many managed services branches will have a skip or waste container where operatives can dispose of waste from completed repair jobs. It’s often based at the builders’ merchant because it isn’t always practical to have waste facilities at the landlord’s offices or depots. In some cases, housing associations are just image conscious and don’t want skips full of broken toilets, bags of plaster and rubble sitting outside what have become polished corporate offices.

With that, the staff member behind the counter told everyone to get out while he followed the operative over to the skip to watch him empty his waste.

At first, I genuinely thought he was joking. He wasn’t. The operatives behind me asked why.

He explained that management had introduced a new process where every waste disposal had to be witnessed by counter staff. The reason was to ensure operatives weren’t using the skip for household waste or waste from private jobs.

It turned out he was completely serious. The counter assistant locked the door, walked across the yard with the operative and left the rest of us waiting outside. While we stood there, the other operative carried on shaking his head in disbelief. He explained to the others that the decision had been introduced after a new manager, who had come from a background completely unrelated to social housing, began looking at cost-cutting measures. According to him, one area that came under scrutiny was how often the skip was being emptied. The manager questioned the frequency of collections and suspected the facility was being misused, although nobody was aware of any incidents that had prompted the change.

Now, I’m not suggesting this sort of misuse never happens. It does. I’ve seen operatives who carry out private work at weekends and then dispose of the waste from those jobs in the skip on a Monday morning. I’ve also known others to clear out their own house or garden and use the skip for that instead. It happens, and pretending otherwise wouldn’t present an honest picture of the repairs and maintenance workforce.

Personally, though, this wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of my list of priorities. That isn’t me suggesting this behaviour is acceptable or that it shouldn’t be addressed. It should. But if I were looking to reduce waste and improve value for money within a repairs service, there are far bigger issues to tackle first. A quick read through Middle Ground will show you plenty of examples of where repairs services lose significant amounts of money every single day.

If you look at the operative side, there’s some that aren’t mentioned in the book like operatives booking materials out against repair jobs for use on their own homes or private work. These are the types of issues that are not always visible through performance reports or meetings alone. They often come to light through conversations with the people closest to the work, like operatives and suppliers who see what is happening day to day.

The reality is that you’ve got hundreds of repairs being carried out every day. Supervisors are already stretched trying to manage teams of operatives, carry out inspections, deal with tenants, resolve complaints and help to keep the service running. They simply don’t have the time to scrutinise every completed job or every material order in detail.

You’ll often hear people justify booking materials out or disposing of their own waste by saying it’s one of the perks of the job, or that their employer doesn’t pay enough so they’re simply taking what they’re owed. Neither argument stands up to scrutiny. Whatever way it’s justified, it’s a misuse of the employer’s resources and a breach of the trust placed in them.

Since I started writing about social housing, I’ve tried to present a fair and honest picture of the repairs and maintenance workforce. That means recognising the majority of operatives who work hard, care about tenants and take pride in their trade as well as the difficulties they face while also being prepared to talk openly about the minority who abuse the system, cut corners or, in some cases, act dishonestly. Ignoring either side only serves to distort the reality.

The question, then, is whether introducing blanket processes that treat every operative as a potential rule-breaker is the right response, particularly when those same operatives are trusted to enter tenants’ homes every day, often unsupervised, carrying expensive tools, materials and keys to people’s properties. If an organisation trusts its workforce with that level of responsibility, does it really make sense to require a chaperone every time someone wants to empty a bag of rubble into a skip?

If there was evidence that people were abusing the waste facilities, then that should be addressed. It’s not difficult to identify the individuals doing this. But there is a difference between dealing with misconduct when it occurs and creating processes that assume everyone is untrustworthy. According to the other operative, that’s exactly how it has been perceived by many of the workforce there since the policy was introduced. He said it has significantly reduced morale and had reinforced the impression that management simply didn’t trust any of them.

It also made me think about the practicalities. Every time an operative wants to empty their van, a member of the builders’ merchants staff has to stop serving other operatives and customers, lock the counter, walk to the skip, supervise the disposal of the waste and then return before normal business can resume.

Across dozens of operatives over weeks and months, that is a considerable amount of time being spent on a process that appeared to leave both the counter staff and the operatives questioning whether it was really necessary. It also has the potential to affect the relationship between the merchant and the housing association. Managed services arrangements are built on partnership, efficiency and supporting the delivery of repairs. When additional processes are introduced that create extra administration and disruption, it is worth considering whether they are helping that partnership or creating unnecessary friction.

When they returned, one of the other operatives asked the counter assistant what he thought of the arrangement. He admitted he had little interest in it and questioned how he was supposed to know whether the waste being tipped into the skip had come from a housing repair or from someone’s private work. Unless an operative started unloading something obviously unrelated to repairs, such as old garden furniture, children’s toys or an old barbecue, there was very little he could realistically determine simply by standing there and watching.

He explained that the main reason he accompanied operatives to the skip was because the yard was covered by CCTV and he didn’t want to find himself answering questions from his manager about why the procedure hadn’t been followed. That struck me as interesting because if the yard is already monitored by cameras, surely the CCTV itself is the real deterrent. If someone disposes of something clearly inappropriate, the footage can be reviewed and the individual identified. In that situation, the counter assistant isn’t really preventing misuse; he’s simply evidencing that the organisation’s process has been followed.

I left thinking exactly what I’ve thought many times before. If you want to understand what is really happening within a repairs service, spend some time in a builders’ merchant, particularly one operating a managed service arrangement. The conversations are rarely just about materials. More often than not, they are about management, culture and the unintended consequences of decisions made away from the frontline.

Speak to the operatives coming in and out and they will often highlight issues that won’t always appear in performance reports like wrong materials being ordered, repeat visits, lack of job notes, stock shortages and unrealistic scheduling. Counter staff have a unique perspective too. They see the patterns that develop over time: materials being held, parts being returned, follow-on works increasing and operatives having to make unnecessary journeys because a repair wasn’t resolved first time.

That point was partly reinforced recently when I came across an article in Builders Merchants News highlighting the growing issue of repeat visits in social housing repairs. Lyndon Johnson, Managing Director at Huws Gray Partnership Solutions, discussed the pressure these additional visits place on housing providers and the wider impact on cost, capacity and tenant experience.

With repairs budgets increasing year on year, it was a timely reminder that reinforced a point I have been making recently: the biggest challenges facing repairs services are often hidden in the day-to-day operation of the service. They are found in the inefficiencies that repeat over thousands of jobs, the decisions that create unnecessary work and the processes that fail to address the root causes of problems.

If the sector is serious about change, then alongside focusing on the operational issues mentioned above, it is critical that it focuses on the workforce delivering the service.

As I’ve said before, repairs services are ultimately delivered by people. You can have the best systems, processes and performance measures in the world, but if you don’t have the right people, the right culture and the right standards, the service will continue to struggle.

That means being honest about both sides of the conversation. The vast majority of tradespeople working in social housing take pride in what they do. They care about the quality of their work, they treat tenants with respect and they want to leave a job knowing it has been completed properly.

These are the people who often become frustrated when the actions of a minority begin to shape how the entire workforce is viewed. When good operatives feel that high standards are not recognised, or that they are being judged because of the actions of others, some eventually decide to leave and take their skills elsewhere to other sectors. The impact this has on the sector, and why experienced tradespeople are choosing to move on, is something I will look at in my next article.

At the same time, we cannot ignore that poor behaviour does exist. There are operatives who cut corners, misuse resources or take advantage of the trust placed in them. Pretending otherwise does a disservice to the many good tradespeople who work hard every day and maintain high standards.

That is why recruitment, training, leadership and accountability all matter. Organisations need to create environments where good operatives feel valued and where poor behaviour is challenged before it becomes normalised. Once low standards become accepted within a team, they are much harder to reverse.

The challenge for organisations is being able to tell the difference. Good management is not about assuming everyone is a problem because of the actions of a few. It is about creating a culture where the right behaviours are recognised, poor behaviour is addressed individually and the people doing the job properly feel valued.

Joe