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The following is issued on behalf of the Housing Authority:
A new HomeCARE maintenance strategy for public rental housing will succeed the CARE programme upon the completion of the first CARE cycle.
At the Housing Authority's Rental Housing Committee meeting today (1 March), Members endorsed revisions to the current CARE programme into the Home-CARE strategy which focuses on adapting the existing strategy to suit the new maintenance situation from early 2002.
A spokesman for the Authority said the HomeCARE programme is to establish a comprehensive maintenance service and provide high quality customer services.
On in-flat maintenance, the new system will clarify the respective responsibilities of landlord and tenant. The main feature of the HomeCARE strategy is In-flat Repair-on-Demand, under which the Authority, as the landlord, will provide rapid and timely repair works to tenants on a need basis.
"Once a request for repair is received from a tenant, it will be promptly investigated and repair will be carried out if necessary," said the spokesman, adding that in-flat technical inspection will be conducted to tie in with the tenancy biennial declaration inspection.
In addition to in-flat maintenance, HomeCARE also features initiatives for frequent estate inspections to identify defects. They are daily patrols by estate assistants, half-yearly technical inspection by district maintenance staff and annual maintenance appraisal by professional staff.
Other initiatives are maintenance programmes based on building elements and service installations, standardisation of design and specification for repair solutions, appointment of contractors according to type of work, staff training and guidance, as well as customer education.
The spokesman stressed that HomeCARE can facilitate early defect detection and rectification. This can avoid the additional expenses arising from further deterioration and it enables building elements and services installations to be replaced at the optimum time in order to achieve the maximum serviceable life.
The current CARE Programme, first introduced in 1993, is a comprehensive, 6-year cyclical planned maintenance and improvement programme. The first CARE cycle is now nearing completion and over 130 estates have received comprehensive repairs.
In future, more emphasis will be placed on the contractors' management and quality control, for example, all contractors will be required to strengthen their own site supervision and monitoring procedures including site cleanliness.
The spokesman pointed out that under HomeCARE, customer service is a major consideration in providing a quality maintenance service. "It addresses the tenants' concern in the first CARE cycle on the response time for in-flat repairs, the disturbances during the works and workmanship standards," he said.
He added that the contributions and expectations of contractors, customers, consultants and Housing Department have been considered and included with the objective of creating long term partnerships.
With customer service as the focal point of the HomeCARE concept and the establishment of a partnership framework with all stakeholders, the HomeCARE programme will provide quality maintenance service in a cost-efficient manner, he stressed.
End/Thursday, 1 March, 2001
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