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Croydon Council seeks new repairs contractors after deal ended early
Croydon Council is looking to appoint new contractors after it announced an early departure from its current repairs contract, which was with the firm in place during the case that launched ITV News’ investigation into poor social housing conditions.
Croydon Council has confirmed that it was now on the lookout for a new cohort of contractors to takeover when its current deal with Axis ends in July 2023, two years early.
The council has now approved a new procurement strategy involving four new 10-year repairs contracts worth £262.9m.
These contracts will be split across areas in a bid by the council to “mitigate the risk” of appointing a single provider.
Three will be outsourced, while the contact centre for repairs could be delivered in-house.
The deal will run for an initial six years and eight months, with a break option at that point, and then a further four years from that point.
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The news of the new contracts comes a year after repairs issues at the Regina Road Estate were uncovered by an ITV News investigation.
An independent investigation, commissioned by the council and published in May last year, into what went wrong on Regina Road found that a leak had gone “undiagnosed and unrepaired” for four years before ITV highlighted the issue.
The probe concluded that the council “failed to deliver basic housing services”, had “a lack of capacity and competence” and “a lack of care and respect for residents”.
The repairs deal with Axis, which sees the contractor instructed to carry out repairs jobs set by the council, began in 2014 and was supposed to last for an initial seven-year period. This also had the option for two consecutive four-year contract extensions.
The deal did not give Axis any control over the budgeting or signing off which housing repairs were undertaken.
A council review of the contract in February 2020 found that Axis’ “KPI [key performance indicator] performance has had some inconsistencies over the six years to date”, but there had been a “generally good performance”.
It also said Axis’ performance compares “favourably when benchmarked against other organisations”.
The contract was then renewed in February 2021 for another four years and was due to start in April, just weeks before the conditions at Regina Road were exposed. However, this will now end next summer.
Croydon mayor Jason Perry said: “The procurement of new housing repairs contract is a real opportunity to make this service more responsive and better for everyone that uses it, with robust systems for monitoring performance.
“I look forward to continuing to work with residents to drive this forward.”
Axis declined to comment.
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