Staff deal with a range of matters related to maintaining the properties tenants live in. These include 

• Reactive -  receiving and processing day to day repair requests 
• Cyclical -  such as annual servicing of all gas appliances 
• Planned -  such as installing new kitchens, bathrooms and replacement windows.

Reactive Repair Categories & Response Times
There are three repair categories with set response times. These are:

Emergency Repairs -    
These are repairs which threaten you or the property’s safety. They can also relate to the loss of essential services. Examples of emergency repairs are burst pipes, gas leaks or loss of ALL heating. Our contractors will make these repairs safe within 3 hours.

Urgent Repairs -   
These are repairs which substantially inconvenience you. They can also relate to loss of services. Examples of urgent repairs are loss of hot water, individual electrical faults or rain penetration. Our contractors will attend urgent repairs within 3 working days.

Routine Repairs -  
These are general repairs or renewals which are not classed as emergency or urgent repairs. Examples of routine repairs are repairs to internal joinery or small leaks. Our contractors will complete these repairs within 5 working days.

All workmen carry identification. Please do not let anyone into your home without seeing identification first.  We will have passed your access details with the order so please try to be at home at the times agreed.  If you happen to be out on a routine repair, a card will be left for you to arrange a second visit.

Right To Repair
From 30 September 2002, under the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001, housing association tenants have the right to have small urgent repairs carried out by their landlord within a given timescale. This is called the Right to Repair scheme.

The scheme covers certain repairs up to the value of £350.00. These repairs are known as ‘qualifying repairs’. A list of these will be provided in a separate leaflet available on request. Our staff will be able to tell you whether your reported repair falls into this category and we will let you know the maximum time the job should take, make access arrangements, tell you the last day the job should be done and give you details of another contractor.

Legislation entitles you to enlist the services of another contractor to carry out the repair, should the designated contractor fail to carry out repairs within the time limit set.  You cannot use a contractor who is not on your Landlord's approved list.

The second contractor will advise the Landlord that you have requested them to carry out the repair.  You have the right to £15 compensation for  inconvenience.

Gas Maintenance
On an annual basis, Atrium carries out gas servicing to all households with gas supply and fitted
appliances (boilers, gas fires etc).  Atrium is required to do this by law to ensure tenants safety. Our nominated contractor will write to you when the annual maintenance visit is due to make arrangements for access. Please allow them access to do the necessary work: it is being done for your safety. 

We take our responsibility to carry out the annual gas servicing very seriously and if necessary we will take legal action to force entry to allow this work to be carried out, recharging all costs to the tenant.

Scottish Housing Quality Standard
In February 2004, Scottish Ministers announced that, following the recommendations of the Housing Improvement Task Force and subsequent consultation, they were introducing a national standard to establish a minimum set of quality measures (the SHQS) for all houses in the social rented sector.

Each housing association and local authority had to prepare a Standard Delivery Plan outlining how they proposed to reach the SHQS within their stock by 2015.

Atrium Homes submitted a Delivery Plan in line with the requirements and the plan was accepted as a realistic and achievable plan to ensure that all Atrium's properties achieve the SHQS by 2015. 

We are currently implementing this Plan through our annual maintenance programmes.