Affordable Housing - Property Services
"Our aim is to help our RSL clients achieve demanding targets for repairs and maintenance services whilst providing good value for money" Nick Sterling, Divisional Director, Property Services
Osborne’s Property Services Division has an important role in supporting RSLs and enabling them to meet their responsibilities to their residents and to Government. We are now one of the leading contractors providing repairs and maintenance services for 50,000 affordable homes in the UK.
This success is founded on our relationships with our clients and our understanding of their priorities, including customer satisfaction, quality of service, value for money, continuous improvement and commitment to sustainability and diversity. Every one of our RSL clients has extended our work beyond the scope of the initial contract. Circle 33 recently quadrupled the number of properties in our care, and Broomleigh Housing Association has extended our repairs and maintenance partnership contract to include planned refurbishment to meet the Decent Homes standard.
Resident satisfaction is a vital success criterion. This measure reflects not just the quality of work completed, but also keeping appointments, completing repairs within a single visit and showing respect for residents and their homes. We have consistently exceeded clients’ expectations in this area, achieving customer satisfaction feedback ratings of 98% at Broomleigh and Saxon Weald.
Osborne works closely with resident associations, recognising the value of their knowledge of the estates. Our ability to exceed residents’ expectations has been aided by increasing the size of our directly employed workforce.
Increasingly, clients wish to take account of environmental factors, such as carbon emissions, delivery miles, use of sustainable or recycled materials, and energy efficiency. An example of this is our work with Family Mosaic to refurbish Victorian homes at Midmoor Road in Clapham, South London, raising the EcoHomes XB energy efficiency rating from 13 to 38.
In addition to responsive repairs, we have a team dedicated to improving properties to the Decent Homes standard and delivering clients’ planned maintenance programmes.
Last year, following a successful partnering pilot with Osborne, delivering reactive maintenance and voids for 2,500 homes, we decided to go ahead and roll out the arrangement to all of our 12,000 homes in London. The success of the relationship established during the pilot – our first experience of partnering on responsive maintenance – was a key factor in our decision to place the contract with them. They showed a lot of commitment to getting the new contract off the ground as quickly as possible, and within four months were up and running and delivering a high level of service to our residents throughout London. The partnership has continued to develop, and I feel that we now have a very good understanding of each other, and a strong working relationship that will benefit both organisations and – more importantly – Circle 33’s residents. Carol Carter, Managing Director, Circle 33 Housing Trust
For more information contact propertyservices@osborne.co.uk