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, Sector Managing Director, Property Services
Osborne provides responsive repairs and planned maintenance services for several leading Registered Social Landlords in London and the south, and has responsibility for 50,000 individual homes. We have long-term relationships with most of these clients, including our continuing partnership with Broomleigh Housing Association, which started in 1998.
Many of these relationships began as short-term contracts, or with the scope of work limited to certain aspects of maintenance. After working with us, many clients increase the amount of work incorporated into our contracts, or enter into longer term partnering relationships with us.
One of these clients is Family Mosaic, with whom we have been working for five years. During that period the volume of work we carry out has increased year on year. Osborne started out as one of three contractors carrying out responsive maintenance work, but our performance led the client to place more work with us, including responsibility for maintenance of 16,000 homes in London. Last year we took over management of Family Mosaic’s call centre, and carried out £11 million of repairs.
Our work with Southern Housing Group has doubled in the last 12 months, and The Crown Estate recently extended our property services contract for two years. This started as a traditionally tendered contract, but is now run as a partnering agreement. We believe that partnering gives the best opportunities for efficiency savings and transparency between client and contractor. We have recently been involved with Russet Homes in a 15-month trial to enable them to assess the potential for partnering.
Osborne’s aim is to provide a consistently high quality of service, whatever the procurement route. Our large directly employed workforce carries out over 80% of our repairs, including M&E and gas installations. We have introduced early evening and Saturday morning appointments for the convenience of residents. We have also introduced out-of-hours services for Circle 33 Housing Trust and Family Mosaic that are proving more cost effective than the services they were using previously.
During the course of the year, we have developed enhanced methods of service delivery to drive further improvements in client satisfaction and value for money, demonstrating our commitment to develop our leadership in this sector.
Osborne has been a partner of Family Mosaic for five years. Over these years their role has grown as they have stepped up to the mark to take over responsibility when others haven’t performed. They have had to put up with a client going through a large merger and constant change, but they have done it with a smile on their face and a willingness to learn and change with us. We are more settled now, but on behalf of our residents we will go on asking for more from ourpartners and ourselves. I know they are up for the challenge. Brendan Sarsfield, Chief Executive, Family Mosaic
For more information contact propertyservices@osborne.co.uk