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YOUR HEALTH AND SAFETY IS OUR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY
During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, we are taking the necessary steps and precautions to minimise the risk to our tenants and staff. The wellbeing of our tenants and staff is of paramount importance to us, which is why we are following Government advice and have made some changes to the services we offer. Please take the time to read over how these changes may affect you. We must all work together in order to try to prevent the spread of Coronavirus and protect our family, friends and the most vulnerable within our communities.
1. Self-isolation & Social Distancing
It goes without saying that you should all now be following the principles of social distancing within your communities. Please let us know if you have symptoms of Coronavirus or a member of your family has and you are currently in self-isolation. The information you share with us will be treated with the utmost confidence and only shared with a third party if emergency works are required within your home. We are grateful to all of our tenants and staff for their patience, support and understanding at this uniquely challenging time.
2. Temporary Service Changes
We have taken the decision to close our office until further notice. This is in line with recent UK and Scottish Government advice. We will keep you up to date through this website and by SMS texting service. In the meantime, our staff will still be able to deal with any enquiries you may have via phone or email.
Our staff will be working from home and we aim to continue providing services with as little disruption as possible. You can still call us on 01786 841 101 or email enquiries@rsha.org.uk. If you normally come into our office to pay your rent/service charges in cash please look at the alternative ways to pay here.
3. Allocations, Voids and Reletting
We would encourage all new applicants to visit our website where you will find a copy of our application form available to download (here). This should then be e-mailed back to enquiries@rsha.org.uk to be processed more quickly. To protect tenants, applicants, staff and contractors we have temporarily suspended all works associated with voids and reletting of our properties.
4. Home visits and face-to-face appointments cancelled
We appreciate many of our tenants prefer to meet face-to-face with our staff. However, in the interest of protecting staff, tenants and the wider public, we will not be carrying out home visits or face-to-face appointments until further notice. We know this is a very worrying time which is causing deep anxiety and concern. We are here to help you where we can.
If you need to contact us urgently, please visit the Staff Team area of our website where you will find contact information for all members of staff. If you already had a home visit or appointment scheduled with a member of staff we will be in touch with you to discuss this and offer an alternative option. Where we are identifying that tenants' means of paying have been affected, we are offering a follow up call from our Income Maximisation Officer, Kevin McGhee, who is able to give specialist advice about benefits and other money advice.
5. Investment works
For the safety of our tenants, contractors and staff, all investment works have been suspended. Kitchen replacement works and Fire Safety Upgrades have been postponed with immediate effect. Our refurbishment programme will commence again when it is safe to do so. We hope you understand that these measures are necessary in the current climate.
In keeping with Government Guidelines external services such as Landscaping, window cleaning, external painting, render cleaning, pressure washing etc are all designated as key works and can be progressed, if carried out by a sole operator who implements social distancing and has availability of PPE etc. This obviously is dependent on our contractors having the staff to undertake the works and we will assess whether works can be undertaken on a scheme by scheme basis.
6. Emergency repairs only
Our main contractors are still operational, however, providing a reduced service. We will only be carrying out emergency repairs until further notice. All gas audit inspections have been suspended but annual servicing is essential and will still continue. We will continue to deal with emergency gas repairs. Please also be aware that our target response time for emergency repairs of 4 hours may be slightly longer than normal. Please contact us on 01786 841 101 during normal working hours to report an emergency repair. Our out of hours emergency contact numbers remain the same:
• Gas repairs call Saltire on 0845 606 1555
• All other emergency repairs please call McDougall Group on 0800 975 1234.
When you report an emergency repair, we will need to ask you some screening questions to protect both you and our contractors before visits can be confirmed. Our Contractors will also ask you a series of questions before they enter your home.
We will advise tenants as soon as possible if there are any further changes to the repairs service. In the meantime, please consider whether your repair is an emergency before requesting a visit.
7. Woodyard Court - New Build Doune
This development is currently in the Defects Liability period until the end of September and all defects are the responsibility of the main Contractor, Hadden. However the Hadden Group are currently not able to guarantee emergency cover service for defects.
Therefore, please contact us on 01786 841 101 during day time hours to report an emergency defect repair. Out with this time, our out of hours emergency contact numbers should be used, Gas repairs call Saltire on 0845 606 1555 all other emergency repairs please contact the McDougall Group on 0800 975 1234.
