Slough Borough Council

Buildings maintenance, Slough Borough Council

Facts and figures

  • 15 year-contract (appointed in 2001)
  • £9.8m p.a.
  • 320 staff transferred from Slough's Direct Services Organisation (DSO)
  • 72,000 helpdesk calls p.a.
  • 30,000 repairs p.a.

In November 2001, the Council selected Interserve to deliver buildings maintenance and repair services to around 6,500 council homes, 1,000 leaseholders and more than 70 council-owned buildings.

The project proved such a success that the partnership was extended to include People 1st, a new Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) created to manage and improve Slough’s council housing.

People 1st aims to ensure that all homes in the borough meet the government’s ‘Decent Homes’ standard by 2012. They run the day-to-day management of all council-owned homes in Slough and plough any profits back into home improvements.

Indeed, the standard adopted in Slough already exceeds the minimum requirement set out by the ‘Decent Home Standards’ with modern kitchens, bathrooms, replacement heating systems, re-wires and ‘secure-by-design’ external doors all on the agenda.

Tenant services

Corporate building services
  • Building fabric maintenance
  • M&E maintenance
  • Gas servicing (CP12)
  • Voids refurbishment
  • Aids and adaptation
  • Cleaning
  • Planned and reactive maintenance
  • Minor and major (tendered) projects
  • Lift maintenance

Achievements

  • A fortnightly drop-in ‘repairs surgery’ offers tenants a face-to-face alternative for discussing their repairs
  • With our support, People 1st has been rated as a two-star housing organisation by the Audit Commission enabling them to draw on £45m over the next four years to achieve its Decent Homes Investment Programme, increasing the number of properties receiving refurbishment from 12 to 48 per week
  • 98.5 per cent of tenants are extremely happy with their last repair and our reduction in the time taken to turn an empty property into a lettable home is improving the visible appearance of estates as thriving communities with a high demand for housing
  • 99.5 per cent of urgent repairs completed within Government time limits
  • Local apprenticeship scheme – encouraging female apprentices
  • Diversity: Introduced multi-lingual helpdesk to support the range of languages spoken and enabled tenants and leaseholders to engage more effectively
  • Accreditations: Investors in People, EN ISO 9001, 14001, OSHA 18001
  • Awards: RoSPA Gold Award ’08 and RoSPA Silver Award ’06
  • Continuous improvement year-on-year