Working on trust

The growth and success that TrustWorks has earned over the last couple of years is not only a neat feather in the cap for its parent RSL Chester & District Housing Trust (CDHT) but also a nice little earner for the organisation.

That’s because the DLO isn’t tied to working for its parent RS L, but actively competes – and wins – work for a growing list of clients. Nor has it restricted its services to fellow housing providers, it has also undertaken restaurant refurbishment work, for instance, indicating the breadth of its capabilities as a commercial operator, if it can be put that way, competing against the traditional players who normally tender to win repairs and maintenance contracts in social housing.

Over the last 18 months to two years, TrustWorks has been working with Steve Biko Housing Association, carrying out some of its kitchen refurbishments and boiler replacements. It has also been engaged by Cheshire West & Chester Council to carry out major void refurbishments.

A rather more intriguing client is G &J Seddon; one of CDHT ’s development partners.

TrustWorks won the competitive tender to install the kitchens into the developments it builds on behalf of the RSL. More recently, with the ink still effectively drying on contracts as it were, TrustWorks has continued its foray into pastures new, this time with a contractor framework.

The decision to allow TrustWorks to tender for work beyond CDHT was born out of the organisation’s business plan, and its 35 year stock condition programme, which has natural peaks and troughs – with the organisation approaching the latter. But more than that, it was also an expression of faith in its capabilities. I n more ways than one, CDHT felt that TrustWorks can compete out there in the
marketplace.

A less imaginative organisation, or perhaps a less confident one, might have responded to the natural downturn in the work cycle with a downsizing reflex, especially in the current economic climate, but far from it. TrustWorks has not only reached out beyond its core remit as a service provider to CDHT to take on other clients – it has also grown – so it is not just actively maintaining levels of employment but giving it a boost.

“We were doing about 60 per cent of all the repairs and maintenance for CDHT , but this has now risen to about 65 per cent because we have just taken cyclical painting back in-house,” said Phil Jones, director of property services. “In about 12 months time, we’ll be doing 75 per cent because we’ve decided to take gas servicing repairs and gas voids work back in-house as well. S o over the last 12 months, we have expanded internally – from our own internal work streams – by 15 per cent over the last 12 months.”

Which, of course, doesn’t include the work it is doing for those external clients.

And with the gas works coming back in-house that expansion will continue. Currently the organisation is in the process of TUPE ing over the workforce and implementing the logistical and managerial mechanisms of the service ready for it going live in due course.

Currently, TrustWorks has 90 tradespeople and employs a total of 115 people, including surveyors, customer care and back office staff, and it provides a full customer call centre and uses modern IT and mobile working systems to manage the workflow and book appointments. The organisation has also invested in skills and training, multi-skilling the trades people, so that they can provide an all-round quality job. In essence, it means that as well as having their own core trade, plumbing for instance, they are also skilled up to carry out plastering or tiling. As a result, it means that one operative can install a bathroom.

For the tenants, it has meant less hassle as they don’t face a “stream of different people” coming and going. TrustWorks has also found that it has increased the delivery time for new kitchens and bathrooms, since it eliminates the time and the logistics of gathering sub-contractors and arranging for the separate trades to be put into place. A nd for the trades people themselves, it has made the work more interesting by giving greater variety to the work. A ll told, it has proved something of a benefit all round.

As the DLO for a housing provider, the permission to tender beyond CDHT and its expanding capabilities are not simply internal business decisions but also something that impinges directly on the tenants, so naturally they have been heavily consulted in the process. But CDHT has also gone a leap and a bound beyond that.

If both CDHT and T rustWorks are noteworthy for the tendering successes of the D LO, it also stands out for its relationship to tenants from a management and oversight perspective. The £12.6 million repairs and maintenance budget is managed by a dedicated board made up of residents. This board is constituted with the devolved power to manage that budget and the property services division, covering TrustWorks operations. So it’s not simply a question of tenant consultation – but tenant management. This board is also invested with the power to investigate service provision in the event of standards dropping off.

The revenue generated by this work is a ready source of income that can be ploughed back into CDHT ’s services, benefitting residents in the areas where it works.

“We’ve just committed £5,000 to the area partnership board, which is investing that money into composting toilets for some allotments in the area,” Jones said. “That’s one small example of us making a surplus than can be reinvested in to communities for the benefit of people living in our communities.”

And, one way or another, that’s what the business of CDHT and TrustWorks is all about.