In the last 12 months, Novus Property Solutions has completed electrical testing and associated repairs for more than six thousand properties managed by a national social housing provider at locations across the south east.
One of the UK’s largest property and leisure management, development and regeneration companies, Places for People owns or manages more than 150,000 homes throughout the UK. In addition to its housing management service, it also develops and manages leisure facilities on behalf of local authorities and works to deliver large-scale neighbourhood regeneration projects.
The company continually invests in its housing stock to ensure residents have a safe and pleasant place to live. As part of the recent 12-month project, a team of 30 operatives from Novus’ Leighton Buzzard office carried out vital Electrical Installation Condition Reports (EICR) to assess the safety of the electrical installations plus fixtures and fittings in residents’ homes. In 12 months, Novus completed all EICR tests plus associated category one and two repairs for 6,386 properties in Milton Keynes, London and the South East region.
Where previously repairs would be carried out on a separate visit following a test fail, Novus completed all works at the same time where possible to avoid further disruption and inconvenience to tenants with additional appointments to arrange.
Novus worked closely with Places for People throughout the project to communicate to residents about the importance of having the EICR tests carried out for their own safety.
Paul Smith, building systems contracts manager at Places for People, commented: “We’ve been very happy with the quality of work and level of service provided by Novus. One of the biggest challenges we faced was convincing residents they needed the work doing, but together with Novus, we were able to ensure the work was carried out quickly and efficiently to keep our residents safe. The fact that Novus worked hard to complete testing and repairs for each household in just one visit as much as possible made the whole process much smoother for our residents.”
Tony Ronayne, operations manager at Novus Property Solutions added: “One of the key benefits we were able offer Places for People was a greater degree of cost certainty. We’d agreed that all testing and associated repairs would be completed for a flat fee per household including labour and materials, except high value items such as consumer unit replacements.
“As well as improved cost-certainly and minimising disruption for tenants, Places for People also benefitted from reduced commercial administration as the flat fee approach helped to speed up the valuation process. The central scheduling we provided also ensured consistency to tenants whilst maintaining control of programme.”
For the last three years, as part of its long-running relationship with Places for People, Novus has played a key role in assisting the social housing provider with its ambitious annual community refurbishment project. Joining forces with other contractors working with Places for People, Novus has donated thousands for pounds worth of materials and equipment while Novus staff have volunteered their time to complete the works required.
For more information about Novus Property Solutions please visit https://www.novussolutions.co.uk/sectors/housing.
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