The two have extended hours so ELHA tenants can contact R3 about repairs and use their My Home accounts to chat online to ELHA staff about any other issue. The services now open at 8.30am Monday to Friday, and close at 4.30pm (4.00pm on Fridays) – an increase of up to 90 minutes each day.

My Home services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and with over three-quarters of ELHA tenants now using their My Home accounts, meaning most tenants are seeing no real change in the services ELHA provides at this difficult time.

As 70% of ELHA tenants are now paper-free too, this means that information can be delivered quickly – a Newsflash on Wednesday was opened by over 60% of tenants receiving it within a few hours of it being sent.

Martin Pollhammer, ELHA chief executive, said: “We are in a fortunate position with our digital service delivery systems and cloud-based software across all our Group that we can work in this way. We are seeing very high demand for our services at the moment, and the way our staff have responded has been magnificent too.

“We managed to develop and launch a new 24/7 online repairs service that still allows tenants to book appointments for urgent works, but otherwise confirms bookings and lets tenants know that appointments will be arranged as soon as it is safe to do so, within four hours of the Prime Minister’s announcement on Monday.

“That is a clear demonstration of the quality of our systems, and I am pleased that we are able to continue to provide such a wide range of services to our tenants in very challenging circumstances.”

• Read all of our articles relating to COVID-19 here.