Posted By Brenda H
Anyone work for or do any work for a housing association and can tell me how they manage the communal areas of flats with regards FRA's?

I know some HA's have a vast amount of flats etc and wondered whether this is sourced out?

If e-mailing me then I can't pick the e-mail up from work but am happy to e-mail anyone for chat.

ta

Posted By rona courtney
HI, I work for a Housing Association. This year we have outsourced the residential & commercial FRAs because of the large number of blocks to be inspected, and because we wanted additional technical information e.g. advice on compliance with building regs. Having undertaken this exercise we are training staff and expect to carry out the bulk of FRAs next year in-house, with consultancy back up for problem properties.
We've found the advantages of outsourcing are -the agency can handle a heavy workload; they have specialist knowledge; we can get an opinion on difficult issues like evacuation policy. Disadvantages are the cost; you still have to interpret the material and prioritise investment; gap between carrying out the survey and receiving the reports means that urgent matters found on survey may not get communicated quickly.
I have found some other HA's use scheme staff with training to carry out basic FRA's but these seem to be ones with newer stock and /or good stock condition information to use in conjunction.

Hope this helps.