Appointed by Salvation Army Homes to undertake an options appraisal for its Responsive Repairs and Voids contracts.
The client
Salvation Army Homes (SAH) is a social housing provider established in 1959, managing over 4,100 homes across England. They provide quality housing accommodation for people in need of safety, security and opportunity.
The project
Faithorn Farrell Timms was appointed by Salvation Army Homes to undertake an options appraisal for its Responsive Repairs and Voids contracts. The commission focused on reviewing existing arrangements and defining the most effective delivery model for future contracts.
FFT’s role was to help Salvation Army Homes understand the impact of potential changes to service delivery, while addressing the challenges presented by a widely dispersed housing portfolio and the differing needs of residents across regions.
Our role
FFT supported SAH through a focused review of its Responsive Repairs and Voids services, analysing historic performance and assessing whether existing contractual arrangements were fit for the future. We worked closely with stakeholders across the organisation to capture lessons learnt, operational priorities, and regional challenges, supported by spend analysis and benchmarking against comparable housing providers.
Our approach combined structured stakeholder engagement, contractor discussions, staff surveys, and soft market testing to ensure recommendations were evidence‑led and market‑informed. The outcome was a clear options appraisal setting out practical recommendations on procurement route, contract structure, pricing approach, geographic configuration, and future service delivery.
Services provided
The challenges
A key challenge was SAH’s extensive geographic spread and its desire to retain a strong sense of local delivery, even where services were not provided by purely local contractors. This required careful engagement with regional contract and project managers responsible for frontline delivery, as well as incumbent contractors, to ensure a full and balanced understanding of existing strengths and challenges.
Another challenge was shaping contract opportunities that would remain attractive to the market without creating regional lots that were overly large or dispersed. Market feedback indicated that maintaining a local service feel was critical, and that overly large or nationalised contract structures could limit market interest.
Additional challenges included reviewing how the existing call‑out charge operated in practice and addressing perceived inconsistencies in responsiveness and service quality across different regions.
Added value
FFT maintained close and consistent engagement throughout the commission, attending regular progress meetings and leading all workshops and presentations remotely to maintain momentum and avoid programme delays. This ensured issues were addressed quickly and decisions remained aligned with Salvation Army Homes’s objectives.
By drawing on our benchmarking data and sector insight, we were able to provide informed advice on delivery models that balanced value for money with customer experience. FFT also spoke with incumbent contractors, creating opportunities to explore collaboration, cost efficiencies and potential improvements beyond the immediate scope of the commission.
The outcome
FFT delivered a clear, market informed options appraisal that provided SAH with the confidence to move forward with a procurement strategy aligned to its operational needs, resident expectations, and long‑term objectives. The recommendations created a robust foundation for future Responsive Repairs and Voids contracts, supporting improved consistency, stronger contractor engagement, and a delivery model capable of adapting to SAH’s evolving requirements.