Delivering clean and safe spaces for residents
Yorkshire Housing is the largest housing association based solely in Yorkshire that owns and manages around 20,000 homes in the region, including retirement living and social and affordable homes. With a priority of creating places people are proud to call home, the association aims to build 500 new homes each year.
About the partnership
Our partnership with Yorkshire Housing commenced in 2022 when we were awarded the cleaning contract due to our expertise and ambition to make a difference in the communities we operate in.
We clean Yorkshire Housing’s HQ, The Place, and provide cleaning services for communal spaces across 248 sites in Yorkshire, including a mixture of sheltered and general housing buildings, as well as community centres. The site locations vary from the city centres to the most remote countryside areas. Some sites are static whilst others are covered by mobile operatives with varying Monday to Friday cleaning frequencies from once a week cleans to five days a week cleans.
50 Churchill colleagues work on this contract who play a big part in the resident community and are mindful of the environments in which they work in, building relationships with the residents so that they feel comfortable with who is around their home.
We are delighted to be working with Yorkshire Housing to deliver clean and safe spaces for their residents. Our values align seamlessly, and we look forward to building on this great partnership which has gone from strength to strength since 2022.
Adding value
We instigated an account management structure that ensures client support at all times. Our account management team consists of an operations manager who leads on our service delivery, a dedicated contract manager and a supervisor. This level of support strengthened the communication with the client via regular updates, improved response times and better reporting.
We implemented our digital platform Mo:dus across the contract to provide assurance on our service delivery. The platform provides valuable insights into completed and open jobs across all sites which the client can access via a client portal for complete transparency. The Mo:dus tagging functionality enables our team to provide photographic evidence of completed tasks and capture task completion times which has increased accountability and allowed for more efficient planning of tasks and cleaning schedules.
With the sites being residential, we are the eyes and ears of Yorkshire Housing. We take health and safety very seriously and launched a near miss campaign across all 248 sites to improve safety culture and prevent any potential incidents and accidents.
We replaced plastic containers with our PVA water soluble cleaning sachets, achieving a plastic saving of 637 kilograms across all sites, which is the equivalent to 80 Henry hoovers.
We continuously evaluate our service delivery and cleaning schedules to identify where we can add value and ensure a productive service.
Supporting the resident community
We continuously evaluate our service delivery and cleaning schedules to identify where we can add value and ensure a productive service.
We advertise our vacancies within the community and have supported a number of residents into work by employing them.
We make regular food and clothing donations to the community. Additionally, we recently donated a defibrillator to Ingsgarth Community Centre for lifesaving support, and purchased garden furniture for the wellbeing garden for the residents and community to enjoy.
We regularly organise community cleans to give back to the residents by enhancing their surroundings. Recently, our team supported the client with their Big Day Out initiative for Yorkshire Day. Beyond cleaning and jet washing all external areas, we planted wildflower seeds which will have a lasting impact on the local ecosystem. The day was a great success, with the resident community expressing their appreciation and recognising the significant improvement to their local environment.
Furthermore, we pledged £20k over the contract’s lifetime to Yorkshire Housing’s Target Hardening funding pot to safeguard residents who have experienced any form of domestic abuse. Safety Planning is also carried out in any affected homes to keep residents and children safe, such as changing existing locks or fitting door chains and window locks. As part of our Employers Domestic Abuse Covenant pledge, it was important to us to help more people in domestic abuse situations get the help they need.
By committing to support Yorkshire Housing’s quest, through setting up a specific fund, we have, and will continue to support the client in a variety of ways from fundraising and donations to social value and environmental commitments.
Rob Agar, Environmental and Estates Services Manager
“Churchill’s commitment to delivering clean and safe communal spaces across our sites is exceptional. The team not only ensures quality service delivery but also integrates seamlessly into our communities – supporting residents through employment opportunities, community events, and contributing to our Target Hardening fund. We’re proud of this partnership and the positive impact it continues to have on our residents and communities.”