Following substantial feedback and involvement from our residents, we’re pleased to share an update on our Estate Services re-procurement process.

Our Estate Services contractors look after the communal spaces, inside and out, at our properties. They carry out a range of tasks including grass cutting, cleaning internal shared spaces, looking after bin stores and many other points.

With more than 13,000 homes – from Margate in the east and Epsom in the West, and Dartford in the north and Eastbourne in the south – our Estate Services contractors cover a huge area.

To manage the process we split the overall area into four separate ‘lots’, and invited bids for two contracts in each – one to cover the cleaning of communal spaces, the other for ground maintenance.

The new contracts come into effect on 1 May, and our preferred contractors (subject to satisfactory completion of final internal checks and balances) are:

	Area covered*	Preferred grounds maintenance contractor	Preferred cleaning contractor
Lot 1	Surrey	Groundscapes	Clean Green
Lot 2	North Kent	Just Ask	Clean Green
Lot 3	East Kent	Avondale	Clean Green
Lot 4	West  Kent and Sussex	Groundscapes	Just Ask

*The description of area covered gives a broad overview of where contractors will be based. You can either view the full list of contractors by location here, or download it in PDF format here.

Resident engagement

As this work is provided for residents and paid for via service charges it’s vital that residents were able to share their views and help shape the service.

Over the course of the project more than 1,300 residents got involved, from online surveys and focus groups to being part of the interview panel to select the contractors.

Wayne Allen, who lives near Dover, joined the interview panel for his local area and said that he valued the chance to be part of the process.

“Having the opportunity to get involved helped me to feel able to own what was happening, and it gave me a sense of partnership and community,” he added.

“The contractors took what we were saying on board, and that made me feel respected as a tenant. For the first time I really understood what it meant to be a stakeholder in a process. I was no longer merely a tenant, and it gave me pride in where I live.”

Next steps

We anticipate that the preferred contractors will start providing services from 1 May, so you can expect to start seeing their staff and branding more over the coming weeks. They’ll also each be updating flats’ notice boards with their cleaning schedules.

If you have any questions, concerns or compliments about the Estate Service Contracts, you can continue to get in touch with us as you did before. You can see all our contact details here.