Pre-War Estates Improvement Programme, St Helens

Prior to transferring the entire stock to a new housing company, Helena Housing, St Helens Council wished to honour a long standing promise to "modernise" its remaining pre war housing stock of approx 650 properties. Unfortunately the Council's financial resources were not sufficient to meet this promise and in addition the Council did not wish to decant tenants as it realised this was a costly exercise.

Officers were given a very difficult task given the fact that the last time work was done in occupied properties this led directly to a major restructure of the Department concerned following issues on site and extremely bad publicity for the Council.

The constraints on finance and the work in occupied properties forced officers to significantly change their approach. The Council had considerable success in respect of a partnering scheme to construct a new school and this fact together with the aforementioned constraints proved to be a powerful driver for change in respect of the approach to refurbishing the houses mentioned previously.

Works

Works comprise alterations to the ground floor layout to provide fully modernised kitchen and bathroom layouts; alteration to first floor layout to en-suite shower room; electrical re-wire, central heating installation including new combi-boiler and plumbing. All works are being carried out to tenanted properties unless there is a health issue.

There are approximately 633 properties in the proposed programme. They are located on three estates, Old Eccleston, Grange Park and Portico. They are all within a two mile radius of St Helens town centre:

• Old Eccleston - approximately 196 properties
• Grange Park - approximately 217 properties
• Portico - approximately 220 properties

It was decided to pursue the partnering approach and to utilise the skills of a contractor together with in-house expertise before embarking on works in occupied properties.

Mansell was selected after a lengthy, rigorous process where despite financial restrictions quality was the predominant factor the Council was looking for, given past experience.