At the moment the work is carried out by Enterprise PLC, but its ten year contract runs out in April 2013. Rather than put the contract out to tender again, the council’s cabinet decided to bring most of the work back as an in-house service.
After April 2013 the bulk of the repair and maintenance work will be carried out by in-house council teams, and there will be some support provided by external contractors as and when needed. Private firms will be asked to tender for these smaller contracts and applications from local companies are welcome.
Repair and maintenance of Barking and Dagenham’s housing stock was outsourced to Thames Accord in April 2003. Thames Accord were later taken over by Enterprise.
Cllr Phil Waker, Cabinet Member for Housing, said: “After some very careful consideration we have decided that this model will give tenants and leaseholders the best service going forward.
“We want to create a service where the majority of repair and maintenance work is done in-house, with flexible support provided by external contractors. There will be an opportunity for local firms to apply for some of these contracts and we welcome their interest.
"Our aim is to provide a better service and we are now looking at cost effective ways of achieving this."
Notes for editors
The repairs and maintenance service currently performs around 79,000 responsive repairs to tenants' homes each year.
There are currently 172 trade based staff engaged by Enterprise on the Barking and Dagenham contract with 111 managerial and admin staff.