Cartrefi Conwy

Cartrefi Conwy manages 3,800 homes in Conwy which are the subject of a £30 million improvement programme, bringing them up to the Welsh Housing Quality Standard by 2012.

Andrew Bowden (pictured right) is Chief Executive Andrew Bowden explained why the Purchase Group were chosen to carry out the work…

“There were three things that we wanted to achieve at transfer. One - bring the homes up to standard; two - create employment and traineeships and three build new homes.

“We wanted to engage a contractor who naturally shared our ambitions and who could add value to the work by improving local employment prospects and had a strong commitment to tenant engagement.

“We worked with our tenants to help select the contractor and G.Purchase is a family business with family values and that came shining through at the competitive tendering stage. The tenants wanted their views to be reflected and with G.Purchase we were confident that this would be integral to their operations, not a ‘bolt on’. 

They beat national companies on cost and quality and we have not looked back since choosing them - they have continued to gain our confidence and trust and once appointed we were able to develop an ‘open book’ style of costing with them which is flexible and effective.

“One of the crunch areas was social inclusion and our work with G Purchase on the Crest recycling scheme has seen us win a National Sustainable Housing award.

“The fact that waste materials are immediately taken away from site and not dumped into a skip that can cause problems on estates has been a pioneering success. Having skips on site may have been acceptable to some larger contractors but G.Purchase are a young, vibrant organisation who have risen to the challenges we have set them and the results have been outstanding..

“We have all seen how a simple renovation project - if you handle it in a different way - can create jobs and training for around 250 people.”