Northern Ireland Housing Executive

About Northern Ireland Housing Executive

Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) was established in 1971 as the strategic housing authority for Northern Ireland.

NIHE is a landlord to around 89,000 dwellings, administers a budget of £750m, has more than 3,000 staff, and offers a range of services to people living in socially rented, privately rented and owner occupied accommodation across Northern Ireland.

For more information – https://www.nihe.gov.uk/

Meeting Our Customers’ Needs

NIHE required a single supplier to secure a vast number of void properties across its Northern Ireland housing stock. Unsecured voids are at high risk of being vandalised and ransacked for valuable material or assets such as metal, cabling, boilers or appliances. Theft or damages would also take considerable time to repair or replace, thereby substantially increasing the property’s turnaround time, which impacts on the organisation’s maintenance budget and rental income.

We became NIHE’s chosen void security supplier due to our ability to provide a range of steel and alarm security solutions, be on call 24/7/365 and deliver a rapid response service to ensure that newly void properties are secured, and protected, quickly and effectively.

Providing Real Solutions

We began to rapidly mobilise our resources for this contract by shipping in equipment, such as vehicles, steel screens and alarms, and recruiting additional operatives to the local areas where we identified any staff shortages. The bulkload of this contract involved securing houses that were undergoing a change of tenancy and other specialist jobs such as securing premises that had fallen to vandalism.

Properties were secured using demountable steel screens and doors and robust security screens made from high-strength, heavy-duty electro zinc coated steel. Our iTrap wireless intruder alarms provided an effective deterrent against future incidents as well as a 24/7 alarm system, monitored by our Alarm Receiving Centre operatives. For higher risk properties, we often installed both solutions to ensure the security of the building.

Most of the vacant properties were located in Belfast, where our Northern Ireland branch is located, but due to our extensive network of local operatives, we were able to rapidly secure any property throughout Northern Ireland within a few hours notice.

We provided NIHE with access to our systems where they can track all work done, in real-time, through our online property management portal. This allows us to be completely transparent with our customer and gives NIHE full access to reports and measurable KPI’s. This access also helped NIHE to determine trends in alarm activations in certain areas or times, which can then prompt preventative action and the introduction of additional security measures.