Mitie Property Services has won a £90m, four year partnering agreement with Birmingham City Council’s housing department to improve the delivery of its repair and maintenance service to 27,000 properties in the south of the city.

The agreement with England’s largest social landlord includes the provision of a day to day repair and maintenance service, with 24 hour cover for emergency repairs, and the management of improvement schemes and inspection services.

The work commenced on 1st April 2006 and is expected to involve more than 105,000 routine repairs per year and the reinstatement of an estimated 2,450 empty properties per year. Since the start of the contract, Mitie has completed approximately 18,500 repairs and has reinstated more than 700 empty properties.

Through the partnering agreement, Mitie is helping the Council’s housing service to achieve its objectives of investing in improvement, enhancing services to contribute towards creating a city of sustainable neighbourhoods. The contract will also continue to develop the quality of the repairs service, and deliver improvement in the level of support and supply of services to tenants during the contract.

Improvements delivered by Mitie will also help increase the Council’s current one star housing service rating received from the Audit Commission, and will assist the department in achieving the commission’s three star status with ‘excellence’ in housing management. Housing service ratings are calculated by performance indicators including the percentage of urgent repairs completed on time and the average time taken to complete non-urgent repairs. The ratings also take into consideration tenants’ satisfaction with the repairs and maintenance service.

Peter Johnson, Partnership Manager for Mitie Property Services, comments: “The Council’s investment in this partnership reflects their wholehearted commitment to improvement - a commitment that Mitie also shares. The partnering agreement will result in discernable housing improvements for tenants across all categories of repair, and will also help the Council to offer an enhanced service in the longer term.”

He continues: “The agreement will also make a real difference to local communities by helping to improve those homes to minimum letting standards in addition to providing a valuable emergency and responsive repairs service within occupied properties.”

Celia Huxtable, Assistant Director for Housing Services at Birmingham Council, explains: “Through our partnership with Mitie we are improving the reliability and efficiency of our service for tenants, to create places that people can be proud of. There is a synergy between Mitie’s value of improvement and our own goals for development, so we are delighted that Mitie is working with us to improve the quality of our tenants’ homes and the communities they live in.”

The contract with Birmingham City Council means that Mitie now works with some of the country’s leading social housing providers who own a combined housing stock of nearly 500,000 properties. Mitie also holds partnering contracts with housing providers and registered social landlords including Home Housing Group, Sanctuary Housing Association, Poole Housing Partnership, Leeds Construction Partnership, Milton Keynes Council, Southampton City Council, and Partick Housing Association, which was Scotland’s first ever responsive maintenance partnering agreement between a housing association and a private company.

9th August 2006