One of the pillars in our LiveWest Asset Management Strategy is to increase our capacity to deliver repairs and void works in-house. This will allow us to deliver a quality service and value for money for our customers. We commenced our insourcing journey in July 2019 with repairs and voids (under the Spectrum Property Care contract delivering works to 1,800 properties).
All contracts being insourced were formerly delivered works through the Knightstone Housing Association Maintenance Partnership, in the areas of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Gloucestershire.
The project continues to support our vision of services to be self-delivered by LiveWest and we now have a further update on our progress to date.
Since January 2022, we insourced the following services:
- MD Group, who had been delivering a day-to-day repairs and voids works service since 2014 to 2,700 properties.
- NKS, who had been delivering kitchen and bathrooms planned programme since 2014 to 11,000 properties.
- MD Group (Electrical), who had been delivering electrical inspections, testing of electrical installations and testing of smoke and co alarms since 2014 to 11,000 properties.
As of 1 June, we have insourced Gregor Heating. Gregor Heating has been carrying out responsive gas repairs, service and boiler installations on behalf of LiveWest to over 6,500 of our homes in the northern area of our operations including Bristol, South Gloucestershire, and Gloucestershire.
To support the insourcing, we are also recruiting response repairs multiskilled technicians, electricians and gas engineers to join our Property Services In-House Maintenance Services (IMS) team. This is an exciting time for LiveWest, and we are really looking forward to welcoming our new colleagues into our Property Services team at LiveWest.
This is the next step towards providing a single in-house service across LiveWest which, once complete, will ensure that we are providing the same high-level service for customers across all the areas in which we operate.