Minutes:
The Chairperson welcomed to the meeting Mrs. J. Hawthorne, Belfast Regional Manager, Ms. F. McGrath, Head of Place Shaping Belfast, and Mr. B. O’Kane, Senior Principal Officer, representing the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE).
The meeting commenced with the Committee being informed of the recent liquidation of JMC Mechanical and Construction Ltd. The Company had been the repairs contractor for NIHE tenants in the Lisburn and Castlereagh area and the contractor for a number of improvement schemes across Lisburn and Castlereagh and the Belfast area.
The Regional Manager advised that from notification of the collapse, on Monday 11th October, the Housing Executive’s immediate aim had been to ensure minimal disruption to services for tenants and to ensure that the maintenance works which had started were completed in as timely a manner as possible.
She reported that the response maintenance emergencies for the Lisburn and Castlereagh Area (LCA) had been picked up through the NIHE’s direct labour section, that usually covered the north and west of the City. To date, over 300 emergency response jobs had been carried out in the LCA and this had obviously impacted the Belfast maintenance work schedule. She further advised that she was pleased to report that a new maintenance contract was pending, prior to the liquidation JMC had been unsuccessful in the award of the new tender, and a new contractor, Greenview, was due to commence on 1st December and, thankfully, the company had agreed to advance its start date to the second week of November.
She advised that JMC had also been the contractor for over 1200 properties in Belfast for planned maintenance works, most had not commenced, but works had started on 23 properties throughout east and west Belfast, many of the homes had been left without bathrooms and kitchens. She continued that thankfully the Housing Executive’s Direct Labour Teams had commenced on site the very next day as many of the families had no cooking or bathroom facilities and within a fortnight most of the works had been completed.
The Committee was advised that the main priority of the NIHE at present was the appointment of a contractor to ensure the delivery of planned maintenance works to the remaining 1200 properties in Belfast (kitchens and bathrooms), with these works having been due to start and finish before the end of the financial year 2021/22. The NIHE representative advised that officers were currently in discussions and negotiations with adjacent contractors to see if they would be willing to pick up some of this workstream, she undertook to keep the Members updated and to also to forward a list of the areas affected.
During discussion it was noted that the building industry was currently experiencing unprecedented rises in material costs and also difficulty in accessing materials. The Regional Manager advised that, to address the rise in material costs, the NIHE, along with other public sector organisations, had agreed an uplift to its contractors which had been subsidised by the Department for Communities.
A number of the Members thanked the representative for the Housing Executive’s proactive approach in addressing the problems that had arisen as a result of the liquidation.
Noted.