Liverpool’s largest social housing landlord LMH (Liverpool Mutual Homes) has brought its maintenance and repairs service in-house, as they look to cut the amount of money they pay out and at the same time improve the repairs service delivered to tenants’ homes.
LMH hope the move will save jobs after breaking away from former contractor Kinetics. A subsidiary company HMS (Housing Maintenance Solutions) will take over the running of all repair work across their entire 15000 property stock which is all covered by landlord insurance from next month. HMS has been created to improve both the quality and speed of the repairs service delivered to tenant’s homes.
LMH Chief Executive, Steve Coffey, said “Due to the extra financial pressures facing the country in general, and social landlords in particular, we have decided to be proactive in order to protect front line services and seek further improvements in service delivery.
“We have a clear focus on being viable and strong and hence we have looked to streamline our business so we are as lean as possible. Traditional approaches are a thing of the past, we need to be innovative and operate more like the private sector in order to be competitive and provide the best possible services for our customers whilst still pursuing our social purpose.”
The creation of Housing Maintenance Solutions is just the first step in making life easier for both landlord and tenant. This new direction is just the start and LMH promise to introduce other money saving ideas which they will announce during the summer. With the constraints in the financial climate and the hike in VAT to 20%, more housing providers may well do the same.