Edgerley Simpson Howe

ESH are a firm of chartered surveyors who manage over 50 Retail and Business Parks throughout the UK, specialising in property consultancy on the edge and out of town retail sector.

UK Gutter Maintenance ltd first met ESH in 2008, when we were awarded the planned maintenance gutter cleaning contract across their entire portfolio.

The contract with ESH did present some hurdles but, as always, we rose to the challenge. The main difficulty with cleaning these types of properties is the sheer volume of vehicular and pedestrian traffic around the parks. Often we have to start as early as 6am on the front canopy gutters, before the parks get too busy; traditionally carrying out the work during February, March and April.

Health and Safety is paramount in our all our gutter cleaning operations and is something that comes under even more intense scrutiny from the many eyes at the Retail Parks. All work is risk assessed with safe systems of work in place and always meets the HSE requirements for working at height, leaving us safe in the knowledge our staff are safe, and in return providing our client peace of mind in the advent of any authority observing our work activities.

Since 2008 we have a built a strong relationship with ESH based on a foundation of honesty. We meet up with the Surveyors on a regular basis to ensure everyone is happy with the way the contract is conducted and managed. We inherited the rates for this contract from the outgoing company. However, we soon found that as our knowledge and experience of the Retail Parks increased the gutter clean times started to decrease. As soon as we noticed this decrease in job time we approached the Facilities Manager at one of our meetings and notified him that we would be reducing our rates. So whilst we still clean the same properties today, we do so at £5,000 less than when we first started.

SIMON MARSHALL, PARTNER SAYS

"UK Gutter Maintenance Ltd have consistently provided an excellent and cost effective service to ESH and its clients. They have undoubted expertise, they are reliable, their photographic reporting is invaluable and they are a pleasure to deal with. They have helped us to provide a market leading service on our managed properties and we look forward to continuing the business relationship."