Southway residents celebrate 10,000 home improvements

Mar 8, 2012

Southway Housing Trust have completed over 10,000 Internal and External home improvements to their homes and celebrated this milestone with a raffle for tenants sponsored by their home improvement contractors who have played a major part in carrying out the works.

A group of tenants and representatives of the Tenant Associations who have been actively involved in consultation and attending Consultative and Customer Service Improvement Groups were present to mark this event.

Rukhsana Nabi of Emanuel Whittaker joined the Chair of the Southway Board, Tony Parkinson, Chief Executive Karen Mitchell and Directors Jane Gant and Ray Smith, together with representatives of partner contractors Bramall Construction, Manchester Working and Wates Living Space in the celebrations. The contractors kindly donated prizes, which will be raffled in the next edition of Southway Stories, a quarterly newsletter for Southway tenants and leaseholders.

Emanuel Whittaker and Salix Homes to collaborate on Green Deal Pilot

Jan 18, 2012

Following good foresight to embrace challenges of Green Deal, Emanuel Whittaker will be working in conjunction with Salix Homes on a number of eco retrofit projects within Salford to pilot PAS 2030. Lessons from the learning and sharing trial will be captured through a joint Emanuel Whittaker/Salix project blog from February 2012.

Matt Roberts at Salix commented “This pilot is an excellent opportunity to work with our partners to ensure they are committed to providing a skilled and energy aware workforce, which will help us deliver against energy efficiency targets now and in the future. It will also provide valuable lessons in advance of the Green Deal going live, giving added reassurances of both quality and service.

Clive Newton at Emanuel Whittaker “Green Deal is an excellent fit for Emanuel Whittaker, enabling us to bring our vast experience of quality and traditional skills into a modern green building environment alongside our valued clients and supply chain Green Deal is a continuation of our commitment and progress to becoming a truly green builder, following naturally from achieving ISO 14001 last year and our Construction Carbon initiative to monitor and reduce carbons using the ConstructCO2 tool”.

Green Deal is the Governments flagship initiative to address energy performance of buildings in the UK. It will deliver a potentially huge volume of eco refit work to homes and business premises commencing in 2012. PAS 2030 is the stringent standard to which all Green Deal installers will be required to become accredited to by autumn 2012 to be part of the Green Deal and other eco retrofit projects.

Emanuel Whittaker initiated a robust Green Deal preparation and delivery strategy early in 2011 with preparation activities across the whole of the business, that includes awareness training for all staff, tool box talks for sites, a review of quality and environmental system to meet the necessary PAS 2030 accreditation early in the new year, in addition to reviewing and addressing the energy performance of their premises.

Streetgate residents – home for Christmas

Dec 23, 2011

It’s been a long five months, but residents were finally invited back to enjoy their newly refurbished communal facilities at City West’s Streetgate Sheltered Scheme in Salford.

The £370k refurbishment was completed by Emanuel Whittaker in an astonishing five months, just in time to allow residents to enjoy their new facilities over the Christmas break.  The makeover included extensive demolition, remodelling and extending the existing communal lounge, extending and remodelling the kitchen and wardens offices, providing fully adapted toilet facilities and creating an outdoor landscaped area. The facilities were equipped with new furniture and soft furnishings selected by residents during the extensive consultation period.

At 97 years and being the oldest resident in the scheme, Elsie Davies was given the honour of cutting the ribbon, along with staff from City West.  Residents, their friends and family were then invited in to take a tour of their new facilities and enjoy and afternoon of celebrations laid on by City West and Emanuel Whittaker.

The residents were truly overjoyed with their new facilities… ‘It’s absolutely beautiful’, ‘they’ve really gone to town on us’ and ‘we can’t wait to have our parties in here’ were just some of the comments from the appreciative residents.

City West thanked the residents, City West staff and Emanuel Whittaker’s for their hard work. Residents then enjoyed a buffet before the entertainment started and in true Streetgate style, it wasn’t long before the residents were dancing and enjoying their new facilities.

Dovedale Community Celebrate

Aug 29, 2011

Contour Homes residents living at Dovedale Court in Middleton are celebrating after the completion of a £190,000.00 improvement programme on their 2-bedroom flats.

Contour Homes Scheme Manager Bernadette Murphy said: “Over the past few months contractors Emanuel Whittaker renewed kitchens, carried out electrical up-grades and replaced boilers.  Despite the disruptive nature of these works the customer satisfaction were 100%, based on a 100% response rate – you really can’t get any better than that!”

Frances Hall has lived on Dovedale for twenty years and said she would not live anywhere else. “I absolutely love living here,” she said.  “My flat is on the top floor and the views are fabulous – on a clear day you can see the Pennines.  There is a lovely community spirit here and we all get on and we were all delighted when we found out that Contour Homes was going to be doing this work.”

House-proud Frances kept her flat spic-and-span but admits that her old kitchen was a bit basic. “My new kitchen is lovely,” she said.  “ I’ve also had a new boiler and central heating system and I feel like I’ve got a new home – without moving from the one I love!

“The work only took two weeks and the lads doing the work from Emanuel Whittaker were so polite and courteous.  In fact, I used to just go and leave them to it!”

Tam Graham, Site Manager said he and his team place a great emphasis on respecting customers’ homes.  “We like to give customers a real role in the works, from the choice of finishes to the quality and standard of works.  We do joint snagging with customers before we hand over the properties to Contour Homes, that way we can be sure customers are happy with the quality of our work.”

Inspired by the work inside their properties the community formed a gardening club in May 2011, with help from Contour Homes Neighbourhood Support Officer Sandra Bush. This brought colour to the scheme and spruced up the outdoor areas. The Resident Engagement Team awarded funding for plants, soil and tools and Community Payback helped with the digging of old plants and weeds.

“We have not got a lot of ‘garden’ but we thought we could plant a few flowers and add some tubs and boxes and it would complete the job that Contour Homes and Emanuel Whittaker have started,” added Frances.

Julie Morgan, Resident Engagement Officer from Contour Homes said:  “We have all heard and seen a lot recently about the lack of community spirit in this country – the residents of Dovedale Court prove that is not the case in Middleton!”

Graham Bullock, Supervising Surveyor from Symphony Housing working on behalf of Contour Homes said “from inception through to completion of the project Emanuel Whittaker’s have delivered the usually consistent and excellent level of Customer focussed service, standard of work and compliance with tight deadlines, budgets  and Health and Safety requirements we expect.  Yet another example of Contour Homes and Symphony Housing working in Partnership with their Planned Maintenance Contractors.”