A survey of 750 letting agency branches and 70,000 tenant requests suggests agents are improving their management of repairs.

The survey – undertaken by repair service Fixflo and the Association of Residential Letting Agents – covered 250 agencies each with an average of three branches, and used Fixflo’s database of 70,000 repair requests so far in 2015.

The results show that a typical rental property requires three repairs per year and that 85 per cent of repairs are completed within a week. Typically a repair requires 90 minutes of staff time to resolve.

A third of repair requests are reported out of hours and 46 per cent of agents and property managers claimed to know a landlord who has switched agency due to a repair related issue – although this figure is eight per cent down on the previous survey.

Most report requests were of course in English but the survey shows that requests made in Polish outnumbered those for the next four languages combined.

“With fundamental changes to the repairs process taking effect for new tenancies in England from October 1, time is running out for agencies and landlords to get robust repairs processes in place. Agencies that fail to comply with the requirements could face both financial and reputational damage” says Rajeev Nayyar, managing director of Fixflo.