Case Studies
Canning Town PFI
(Private Finance Initiative)
Background
In June 2005, Newham Council awarded Regenter London City East Partnership a 30 year Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract to provide the management and refurbishment of around 1,250 homes in Canning Town, East London. The main aim of the project was to bring the properties up to the decent homes standard. The consortium is made up of Regenter (a joint venture between Pinnacle Regeneration Group and John Laing Social Infrastructure) who provide the funding and act as the principal liaison with the council; Pinnacle PSG who provide the housing management and estate services; and Equipe who carried out the refurbishment and provide on-going repairs and maintenance.
Delivering on commitments
This contract is an excellent opportunity to make significant and long lasting improvements to a community in an area close to Canary Wharf, the Olympic site in Stratford and benefiting from good transport links via both the Underground and the Docklands Light Railway.
Enormous progress had already been made, with Newham announcing the completion of the decent homes programme for Canning Town three months ahead of schedule due to Equipe delivering this component of the contract well in advance of the target date.
The Decent Homes Programme is the government target to raise the standard of 95% of all council and registered social landlord housing in England by 2010. One of the council’s priorities for Canning Town was the lifting of all homes in the contract area to this standard, something that has been far exceeded.
We have one tower block in the estate that consists of 42 one and two bedroom flats on 11 floors. This was refurbished in 2007 with each property having new bathrooms and kitchens and gas central heating fitted. Improvements have continued with the roof being renewed, the stone work jet-washed, communal areas painted, emergency lighting installed and new CCTV cameras put in. Concierge services are provided 7 days per week, from 8.00am to 11.30pm, playing a vital role in ensuring satisfaction among the residents remains very high.
For the remainder of the contract, Pinnacle PSG is providing property repairs and refurbishment on the estate. As with the decent homes objective, all targets have been exceeded. Responsive repairs are completed in an average of less than four days and 99.4% completed at the first time of asking. Our surveys show that 100% of tenants are satisfied both by the time it takes to complete repairs and the quality of the work.
Working with the community
Pinnacle PSG places a high value on people. Our customers, residents in the local community and staff are important to us and we always like to hear what they have to say. Such feedback is invaluable in designing an effective, accountable and responsive service. Involving residents is key to our success including working closely with the locally-elected Canning Town and Custom House PFI Residents Panel. They meet monthly to discuss issues affecting the estate and give us a regular briefing with which we design service improvements. Cleaning schedules, for example, were changed in some parts of the estate after members identified areas where cleaning should be more frequent and other parts where the need was not as great. All residents receive regular updates on this work through two newsletters – a quarterly from Pinnacle PSG and the area focused “E16”, to which we contribute.
Making open spaces right for everyone is also important. Through our Pinnacle PSG management challenge programme, we’ve have created sensory and secret gardens for the estate. One of these gardens won the TPAS (Tenant Participation Advisory Services) regional housing excellence awards for green projects and initiatives. Further improvements to rear communal gardens were made with residents involved in the designs.
Measuring Pinnacle PSG’s Success
Pinnacle PSG has consistently exceeded its targets on this project, delivering high levels of customer satisfaction across the board. The project gained the Public Private Finance Award for Local Government PFI project of the year in both 2007 and 2009 and our overall customer satisfaction rating in 2007 and 2008, as surveyed by the Newham Council, was 79%. This figure in Canning Town is higher than the average overall satisfaction level achieved by any of the 32 London Boroughs.
