Birmingham council has given its contractors an ultimatum: help reorganise its repairs service or risk losing contracts.
The council believes its creaking repairs and maintenance service, which has been slated by Audit Commission inspection reports (HT 19 September, page 7) , needs a complete overhaul to be effective.

Birmingham wants to alter the working arrangements it has with repairs contractors Birmingham Accord and AWG so they become less "adversarial".

The present system pays contractors a set fee for certain categories of job regardless of their actual cost, for one that guarantees a fixed profit on all the work they do.

The repairs contracts are due for renewal in 2006, but the council's recent efforts to clear a huge backlog of repairs – more than 40,000 jobs – has added urgency to its proposals.

Senior housing manager David Hucker, hired by the council to help improve the service, said contractors acknowledged that the present arrangements were unworkable.

He said that the nature of their response to the proposals could affect whether they are granted an extension to their contracts.

"There can't be any promises, but it's an obvious incentive for them to show strong willingness to help us change the way things are done."

Some of the proposed changes to the repairs service were tabled at Birmingham's cabinet committee on housing performance on 8 January.

They are due to be discussed further at meetings in February and March. Hucker said council members were "comfortable" with the scale of change envisioned.

Source

Housing Today