Stretford House And High Rise Living

Stretford House (source)

On an earlier blogs there was a comment asking for an update on Stretford House. I'm not sure if this will only be of interest to a limited number of people but I'm very happy to shed some light on how things have been going.  

The most important point to note when it comes to Stretford House is that in total the programme involved over £4 million of investment. This makes it the single largest improvement the Trust have ever been involved in. This has clearly been a very large project which would inevitably involve some level of disturbance to residents. This being the case we’ve had to work with residents and try to inform them at the earliest possible point when work was going to impact on their homes and their lives. 

By one measure this seems to have been a success as our surveys show that there is 100% satisfaction with service and 98% with the finished product. I’m confident that this doesn’t tell the whole story though and judging from the original comment and my own sense of the project it’s clear that it wasn’t all smooth sailing. 

To give you some background, the work that needed doing was fairly complex and in addition to improving kitchen and bathrooms (something we're getting a lot of practice at after undertaking work to over 6,500 homes in the Borough) it also involved replacing an out-dated heating system with a modern centralised boiler plant to provide more economical heating, which is even more important at a time when energy bills are going through the roof.

Alongside the improvements to the individual homes we also had to replace crumbling sewerage and drainage pipes running through the centre of the building which as you can imagine was a real challenge. All of this had to be done whilst a majority of residents remained in their homes.

Some of the more notable problems we ran into involved an issue with the fire-stopping works. Asbestos was found between the floors and access to flats proved difficult at the time. Making sure residents were safe was our number one concern and this had a number of knock-on effects including delays in starting works and having to visit homes on two or three extra occasions.

Our aim in this project was to ensure we provided the best quality homes possible for the people who lived in Stretford House, we also have to ensure their safety while the work was going on and try and minimise the effect that this work has on their lives. The issues we came up against ultimately led to a delay - with work finishing on January 11th rather than December 10th. I know that there are a small number of issues still being resolved which we will complete as soon as possible - if these affect you then please contact us by email or call 0300 777 7777.

Working on Stretford House has been a big learning curve for the Trust with lots of challenging experiences along the way. We are now planning the works to a further five tower blocks in Old Trafford (you can keep up-to-date with all planned improvements here). The real test will be how we transfer these experiences and learn to provide an even better service and an even better finished product.