Refurbishment and maintenance firm, Connaught Partnerships Ltd, has secured a repairs and maintenance partnership with Link Housing worth £2.5m.

The contract will see Connaught deliver a repairs service to over 4,000 tenants and owners across the West of Scotland including Glasgow, Paisley and Renfrew over a four year period.

The agreement comes as Link Housing aims to streamline its operations to ensure a consistent and cost effective delivery of service to both tenants and owners. The housing association previously used a number of contractors across the area; Connaught will take over work in January 2009 as the sole partner.

Martin Morrison, Connaught area director, said: "Connaught is delighted to secure the repairs partnership with Link Housing which covers everything from electrical faults to plumbing issues. We have a strong track record in this area and are looking forward to ensuring customers experience a fast and effective repairs service."

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Link Housing undertook a consultation process with a panel of tenants to ascertain the key objectives for the repairs service and found that tenants' priorities were; getting the repair right first time, fewer repeat calls, the introduction of an appointments system and high quality repairs. Maureen Middleton, director of housing and technical services believes Connaught can deliver this high level service to Link customers.

Ms Middleton said: "As a result of the repairs service review, we decided to appoint one major contractor in the west region from January and this will be followed by the appointment of a second contractor for the east region from April, so that we can give tenants a consistent, value for money service and monitor the quality of repairs more closely.

"We are pleased to have Connaught on board and we are confident that we can work in partnership to deliver a high quality repairs service for our tenants."

Connaught has implemented new technology to co-ordinate the tenants repairs service in Dumfries and Galloway which has seen tenant satisfaction more than double over the past six months. The same technology will be introduced to Link Housing to deliver an efficient and cost effective approach to the repairs service.

(GK/JM)