The Peabody Trust has been forced to rethink its repairs and maintenance system.
The troubled registered social landlord has closed down the £3.15m fund to which its 36 local estate offices had access in order to carry out repairs. The funds have been moved to its centralised repairs service, Peabody Maintenance Partnership.

The move, intended to increase efficiency, emerged just a week after the trust was awarded an amber light in the Housing Corporation's traffic light assessment of its financial viability and follows revelations of cost overruns on the RSL's flagship BedZed scheme (HT 9 January 2004, page 7).

The trust also laid off 51 staff in December in an attempt to refocus its efforts around meeting the decent homes target.

The reshuffle of the maintenance fund came amid disquiet among staff at the changes made within the RSL, particularly its decision to close five estate offices – Croydon, Vanguard Street, Tottenham, Fort Street and Herbrand Street.

Tenants were informed of the closures on 6 February and told they were a pilot scheme.

Sally Harvey, Peabody's interim director of operations, said: "In order to offer an improved service to residents we are piloting, on a small number of estates, the centralisation of repair reporting.

"This will free up estate staff to focus on other important areas of service delivery and, at the same time, connect the tenant directly to staff who are responsible for managing and completing repairs."

But an insider claimed the changes were an attempt to cut down on the money Peabody spends on emergency repairs.

We’ve all lost faith in Peabody. There’s absolutely no sense of satisfaction in our jobs

Peabody Trust staff member

The source said: "There is no money for repairs in the company – all repairs, except emergency, are being passed on to programmed maintenance, which means they will be done at some point in the next year. They are disappearing into a black hole."

He said the system was stopping him from delivering a proper service to tenants, who were "in uproar".

Among staff, he said: "Morale is very low. We've lost all faith in Peabody. We all thought we were working for a number-one organisation but now there's absolutely no sense of satisfaction in our jobs.

"Management are stopping us from doing what we want to do."

A spokesperson for Peabody, however, said the trust had £900,000 left to spend on repairs and that the maintenance partnership had changed the priority of only 5% of repair jobs.

"Organisational change can be difficult. We are doing our best to inform staff of the reasons for the changes and how they will be affected," she added.