AQW 24920/17-22

Ms Kellie Armstrong
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 01/11/2021
Answered On Date: 02/12/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for Communities how long the online Housing Executive portal for tenants to report need of a repair has been offline; and when the online service will return.

Answer:

The Housing Executive has advised that its tenants could report a repair via an online form on the Housing Executive website until September 2021. At this time, the website suffered a temporary outage for a period of approximately 2 weeks.

Since May 2020, the Housing Executive has had a separate Tenant Portal where customers can manage a range of tenancy matters online, including reporting a repair. During the period of the website outage, a temporary webpage advising customers of the continued availability of the Tenant Portal and the functionality it offered (in the absence of the website) was in place.

Following a quick registration process, the Tenant Portal offers a number of benefits and services to customers, including the retention of personal and property information, the ability to report and track the progress of repairs and access to their rent account. Therefore, the Housing Executive has no plans to reinstate the online repairs form that was previously available. Messaging on the Housing Executive website is currently being updated to further highlight this change over to the Tenant Portal as the sole means of reporting repairs online.

The Tenant Portal continues to be available and anyone experiencing issues accessing this can visit the FAQs page on the Housing Executive website or call the helpline on 03448 920 910 and a member of staff will help them resolve their issue.