Madrid introduces a single telephone number for faults in 24 affordable-rental developments

The main new development will be to end fragmented management between different companies. Each development will be placed in the hands of a single provider responsible for coordinating all shared building services, from a technical fault to a problem with the lift.

The same company will also take on cleaning and gardening. Residents will have a direct telephone switchboard through which to report an incident to the company responsible for resolving it, avoiding the need to work out which provider corresponds to each problem.

The system, known as facility management, will be introduced progressively across the 24 new developments that the municipal company will add to its public housing stock. Implementation will begin with properties handed over from January next year.

EMVS Madrid will thus leave much of the day-to-day management in the hands of these operators and concentrate on supervising and auditing the work. Its role will be to check that incidents are resolved properly and that companies meet the quality levels set for public buildings.

The change follows strong growth in the municipal stock. Over the past seven years, EMVS Madrid has increased its number of public homes by around 60% after developing and building more than 3,650 new flats, an expansion which also multiplies the repairs and maintenance tasks it must manage.

For those moving into public housing from 2027, the change will be most noticeable when a domestic problem arises: a broken shared door, a lift out of service or a cleaning issue will have a single point of contact. The City Council seeks for that simplification to reduce waiting times and make the daily maintenance of new buildings a much less bureaucratic process.