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Caretaker service

We provide a caretaking service to our tenants and leaseholders who live in high-rise and low-rise blocks across the city.

We aim to deliver a flagship seamless, co-ordinated and efficient caretaking service which demonstrates excellent value for money.

We want to provide an excellent service which shows the highest levels of committment to quality and professionalism in what we do. This is why most of our caretakers are now trained to certificate standard in health and safety matters.

All our caretakers take part in improving our service to customers. To do this we look at customer feedback to see what can be improved and where.

Following on from the success of our tenant inspectors in looking at estates across the city, we now have a team of quality assurance inspectors to look at caretaking standards.

They started three-monthly inspections in December 2008. Our target was originally to achieve a minimum 2-star rating for all high-rise blocks by June 2009. By using feedback from these three-monthly inspections staff have worked hard to achieve this.

Our quality assurance inspectors look at the following when making their block assessment:

• Parking areas (where appropriate)
• Grassed areas (where appropriate)
• Entrance halls and foyers (where appropriate)
• Lifts
• Floors
• Stairs and stairwells
• Internal walls
• Chute rooms
• Bin rooms
• Internal glazing
• Light fittings
• Levels of graffiti

A combination score of the above elements is shown in the our high-rise block assessment table.

The caretaker services manual was produced to help inspectors in this assessment process. Caretaking standards are explained using a combination of text and photographs.  These descriptions form a quality assurance framework, against which caretaking standards can be fairly assessed.

Quality assurance inspectors will soon be inspecting low-rise blocks of flats in similar way.

Improving our performance

The star rating has now been upgraded so that our target is now 16 out of 21 high-rise blocks to achieve a 3-star rating by December 2009.

Star ratings for all high-rise blocks will be displayed after each assessment has been finished together with details of actions to be taken to make sure these high standards continue.

We are always looking for new people to join our team of block quality assurance inspectors. If you would like to get involved, please call our Business and Development Team on 0115 915 7423 or e-mail performance@nottinghamcityhomes.org.uk. You can also contact our Estates and Caretaker Service on 0115 915 1865 or e-mail estateservices@nottinghamcityhomes.org.uk.