Estate Services Audits

Estate Services Consultation

Our Head of Social Housing Consultancy, Steven, has 25 years’ experience pricing, mobilising and delivering services across the social housing sector. Having to drive efficiencies alongside continuous improvement in order to offer value for money, compete and win contracts.

The Estate Services Audit highlights the ‘current state’ and makes recommendations based on best practice and comparable, high performing estate services solutions. It focuses on quality, opportunities for efficiencies and maximisation of your team’s time. This includes the structure of the team, skills gap analysis and recommendations, equipment, IT and systems, as well as process improvements for the service.

"It's been a pleasure working with Steve and the wider team at T&L. Highly practical approach - commercially focused and a great example of procurement consultancy and grounds maintenance expertise. We look forward to working with them" Paul Smith - Head of Assets and Building Safety - South Lakes Housing

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An audit is an opportunity for a housing association to:

Have a third party, independent, verification and commercial assessment of the service

Receive a Service Health Rating against industry benchmarks

Highlight and recognise what you are doing well

Identify quick wins

Identify medium and longer terms solutions to support continuity and modernisation of the service

Have a set of options, and likely impact, to consider and prioritise.

While we tailor each audit based on the specific requirements of our clients, largely they follow a 3 stage process.

The estate services audit is often used prior to re-tendering the service to ensure an effective procurement exercise, or as part of DLO service improvements and business planning. This can form part of an options and appraisal including the use of existing estate services frameworks and DPS.

All our solutions are bespoke and based on our clients requirements. For example, you may only need an audit and support with your grounds maintenance service. Part of this audit may include us creating a bespoke grounds maintenance specification. Or as part of your procurement preparation you may only need support with GIS and site maps.

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Estate Services Audit - Stage 1

Project Stage 1: Desktop analysis and preparation We will analyse a range of documentation, including specifications, contracts, budgets, staffing structures, schedules, strategies and historic performance data, to create a Service Health Rating. Reviewing your current costs and benchmarking these against other organisations, including financial modelling. We will also investigate service charges and charge-back to customers. We will assess your approach to service charges. Our assessment focuses on your strategy and approach to service charges, comparing it to others in the sector. During this phase, we will also coordinate with key personnel to arrange site visits and ensure that our time on site is maximised.

Estate Services Audit - Stage 2

Project Stage 2: Auditing and analysis Meet and host staff focus groups with key individuals from both the delivery side and management side including a “Bring Hints to the Table” workshop as well as a “Challenge the Ideas” workshop. We visit a representative selection of your estates and schemes to monitor standards and audit the teams working on site. We will also visit your depots. Typically, we also assess health and safety, training, HR processes, insurances, and data will be analysed including GIS and site mapping accuracy. We will design a customer survey and host tenant focus groups out in your communities. An investigation into IT systems, assessing the current and highlight the impact of other options and products on the market, and the associated costs, efficiencies and benefits.

Estate Services Audit - Stage 3

Project Stage 3: Collation and feedback We will collate and share our final estate services report. This will also incorporate feedback from the “Challenge the Ideas” workshop. Our report will include: - Commercial evaluation and comparison to others in the sector - Service charge review - Our wider recommendations - Proposed delivery plan, broken down into short, medium and long-term outcomes, aligned to your goals - Recommended IT systems - Plant and equipment - Training and support structure required to improve the service - Assessment of efficiencies and performance improvement opportunities. We will act as a “Critical Friend” throughout this process.

Estate Services Audit

Get in touch with
our experts

Estate Services Consultation

An audit is an opportunity for a housing association to:

Estate Services Audit - Stage 1

Estate Services Audit - Stage 2

Estate Services Audit - Stage 3

Commercial Benchmark with Clear Operational Improvement Plan

Estate Services: Audits and Mentoring for Housing Associations

Estate Services Audit

Get in touch with our experts

Estate Services Consultation

An audit is an opportunity for a housing association to:

Estate Services Audit - Stage 1

Estate Services Audit - Stage 2

Estate Services Audit - Stage 3

Commercial Benchmark with Clear Operational Improvement Plan

Estate Services: Audits and Mentoring for Housing Associations

Get in touch with
our experts