4 November 2025 · Owen Pritchard
Drawing a housing repair backlog on paper, not on a wall screen
Housing committees have started to ask for damp and mould to be visible beside the rest of the open jobs. That is right. It is also how two clocks get mixed: a leak that should be made safe in hours, and a mould job whose survey date sits weeks later. On a live wall both glow the same amber.
On paper we use two strips. The upper strip is jobs still inside the published timescale, grouped by trade. The lower strip is jobs that have passed it, with the number of days past printed in type small enough to discourage league tables and large enough to read. Damp and mould occupy their own column so they cannot be buried inside “multi-trade”.
We draw from the works-order extract, not from a screenshot. Screenshots hide the jobs that were cancelled and raised again with a new number. Officers who live with that practice already know it; members do not. The method note says how we treated cancelled twins.
Print two copies. One stays with the chair. One stays with the repairs manager. If they diverge after a month, the extract has drifted or someone is working from a different cut. That disagreement is useful. It is cheaper than discovering it in the chamber.