Estate inspections

Process

The "Maintenance" and "Cleanliness" indicators under the TCMR provide residents with an objective assessment of the state of cleanliness and maintenance of their estates. HDB officers collect data for these two areas of assessment.

To ensure consistency in the recording of observations, HDB officers are guided by a set of performance standards checklist during inspection. They are also equipped with cameras and PDAs (or other portable devices) to record and substantiate their inspection observations. Upon completion of the site inspections, these observations will be forwarded to the respective Town Councils for their follow-up.

To ensure that the estate inspections are fair and transparent, the following parameters are adopted:

• The inspections are carried out on weekdays (except public holidays) from 10am to 5pm.
  
  
• Staff of the Town Council are invited to join in the inspections. Together with them, the inspectors carry out the estate inspections covering common areas of residential blocks and shops, open areas market/hawker centres, bin centres that are managed and maintained by the Town Council. In particular, the areas include:-
  
  
  • ground floor; void deck; letter box areas
    
    
  • staircase; common corridors
    
    
  • lift lobbies; lift landings
    
    
  • apron floor; apron drains
    
    
  • open areas; turf areas; facilities; bin centres
  
  
• All blocks are inspected for cleanliness. For maintenance, blocks undergoing Repairs & Redecorations, upgrading/ redevelopment, and new blocks (within 1-year defect liability period) are excluded from inspection.
  
  
• All HDB blocks managed and maintained by the respective Town Councils are inspected at least once annually. In addition, inspections are spread out such that all Town Councils will have blocks inspected every month.
  
  
• Town Councils may appeal against observations they feel should not be included in the inspection results.
  
  

In addition, HDB also adopts the following fair practices:

• HDB officers are informed of the ward to be inspected only on the day of inspection, and are rotated to different Town Councils to minimise individual subjectivity.
  
  
• Inspectors are randomly paired with Team Leaders on joint inspections to ensure consistency in application of performance standards.

HDB officers record observations using handheld devices:

  



Last updated on April 17, 2012