Christian Action Housing recognises that the care and maintenance of an estate by a responsive and well-trained estate services contractor can make a dramatic improvement in its appearance and contributes to better living standards.
Christian Action Housing’s estate services contractors are fully trained in cleaning matters and duties, health and safety, and the standards that we expect. All staff are subject to clear method of working statements which are carried on all of their vans.
The contractors are equipped with all the necessary equipment in order to help them carry out their work and all estate services operatives wear clothing with their company’s logo on them. They are also trained in recognising and reporting repairs.
We currently have our own Social Enterprise, Neighbourhood Estate Solutions (NES) which employs young people who have been unable to find suitable employment for six months or more, to deliver the estates services for our Enfield properties. NES has been in operation since April 2010 and the team are supervised and managed by a senior member of staff.
Christian Action Housing employs a dedicated Performance Officer who regularly visits schemes to monitor the performance of the contractors to ensure that high standards are maintained and will report back any areas of poor performance. In addition to this Neighbourhood Officers also carry out regular visits to schemes on their ‘patch’ to identify other issues such as communal and tenant repairs, car parking, health and safety aspects, tenancy breaches or specific residents concerns whilst on site.
Residents have been involved in helping to set the standards for our estate services. Some estates have a nominated resident who acts as a ‘Champion’ for the quality of the services received at an estate. The champions make independent periodical inspections indicating their opinion of the estate services and grade the services.
The cleaning schedules for an estate are displayed on notice boards (where appropriate) and photographs of the cleaning team are displayed in order to help identify them.
There are four main areas of work that the estate services contractors are responsible for: internal communal cleaning, external communal cleaning, gardening and window cleaning. In general, street properties do not have cleaning contracts and cleaning and garden maintenance are the responsibility of the tenants. Window cleaning is only carried out at certain blocks.
The estate services contractors will carry out:-
In general, if you have requests for specific areas of work that you think needs doing, these should be brought to the Association’s attention rather than to the contractor directly.