Content

RESOLVED:
 
To approve the award of a 2 year contract
to Contractor C for planned
internal works to council housing stock,
with a further year to complete instructed works, at a value of up
to £8m, which has been directly called-off the Fusion 21
framework.
 
Reason(s) For Decision / Options
Appraisal
 
5.1.0 The Council’s capital delivery programme is
essential to ensuring the ongoing maintenance of the housing stock,
ensuring it reaches the required standards.  One of the key aspects of this is ensuring
that the inside of the home is in a decent condition; this means
having a kitchen, bathroom, electrical and heating system which are
to a good condition and modern standard.  It also means ensuring the home is free of hazards
to the safety of residents, and provides adequate fire safety
measures (including alarms and fire stopping).
 
5.1.1 These works are essential to improve residents'
welfare and living conditions. The main benefits of the works will
be in improving fire safety, ensuring hundreds of tenants benefit
from new kitchen, bathroom and heating facilities in their
homes.
 
5.1.2  In 2021 the
Council’s long term framework (which was called
‘Contract 1’) ended.  In
2020 a business case was approved to award an interim contract to
cover planned internal works, because it was expected that there
would be a delay in the procurement of a replacement contract due
to the disruption of Covid and the
cyber attack.  The work to procure a planned internal work
contract was not actively progressed in 2020 or 2021 due to the
ongoing limitations on working in people’s homes from
covid restrictions.  The programme development was also made more
complex due to loss of key data.
 
5.1.3  From 2024, there
will be a new Regulator for Social Housing.  One of the new consumer standards will be
‘Quality and Safety’.  The
work in this contract will be key to ensuring that these homes are
improved to satisfy these standards.
 
5.1.4 The properties have been selected based on the
Council’s 7 year programme which was published as part of the
Housing Asset Management Strategy in 2019.  The business case for this project makes provision
to complete necessary internal works to all homes in line with this
planned programme.  The work will start
with properties in Year 1 of the programme.  The work will continue insofar as the contract
value permits.  The scope of work is
subject to ongoing surveys.
 
5.1.5 There are about 3500 properties in each year of the
programme, of which about 30% are leasehold.  It is not the Council’s responsibility to
carry out this work to leasehold properties.
 
5.1.6 In Year 1 of the 7 year programme, there are about
3500 properties in total.  Of
these:
 
C.1100 are leasehold and will not be included
 
C. 700 may require work
 
C.1700 are unlikely to require work
 
 
At present surveys are being undertaken to finalise the
list of properties that require work. 
Surveyors are surveying all 700 properties which may require work,
and a 10% sample of homes where it is unlikely they require work
(this sample will be expanded as necessary).  Currently it is estimated that about 200-300
properties in Year 1 will require planned internal
works.
 
5.1.7  Surveys on
properties in Year 2 of the programme will be started in early
2024.  There is likely to be a similar
number of qualifying properties in this set.  Further surveys will be carried out as
required.
 
5.1.8   The original business
case included planned internal works to Lincoln Court also; this
work was awarded via a Delegated Powers Report in November
2021.  This work started in March 2022
and is now complete. 
 
5.1.9   The works are proposed
to be awarded in multiple batches; the first in late 2023 to cover
all qualifying homes in Year 1.  The
second will be issued to follow on from this and achieve continuity
of works.  At present this is estimated
to be in summer 2024 (subject to contractor performance and
programme of the first batch).  This
batch will be all qualifying homes in Year 2 of the capital
programme.  Further batches will be
issued, subject to available contract value.
 
Alternative Options (Considered and
Rejected)
 
The full details of the alternative options considered at
the start of this work was set out in the Business Case report
(Ref: NH Q86) which was approved by CPC in July 2020.  The summary is:
 
Option 1 - Hold procurement of these works until new
contracts are in place (rejected)
 
Contract 1 ended on 31 August 2021.  The procurement of the new framework contracts has
been delayed by the Covid-19 lockdown, 
both due to internal operational limitations, and the need to
ensure the market is suitable to procure long term
contracts.  It is estimated that the
tender exercise will start in spring 2023, however, it will be
spring 2024 before a contract is signed as the tender process,
leasehold consultation and internal governance approvals take about
a year for a contract of this scale.
 
As a result the Council decided in July 2020 to procure the
Planned Internal Works via an interim contract so that this work
could proceed before the planned main framework is in
place.
 
Option 2 –  Procure a
Stand Alone Contract (rejected)
 
This option involves carrying out an independent
procurement process to let the works. In general this option
requires more resources than the proposed option to use an external
framework, and this was rejected as it presented a risk of
diverting resources from the main procurement work for the new long
term contracts and causing further delays. 
 
Option 3 - Insourcing the work (rejected)
 
The option of in-sourcing the planned works was examined,
however, the scale of the work, both in value and in type, and the
timescales involved, means that it was neither desirable nor
possible to restructure the DLO in time to carry out this
work.