Provision of Out of Hours and Community Alarm Telephone Answering Service

Overview

ateb owns and manages just over 3,000 homes in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire. Our homes include a mix of houses and flats for single people and families as well as Supported and Independent Living accommodation. ateb are looking to contract out two key services for dealing with emergencies related to property and to the support of some of our most vulnerable Customers. ateb would like to contract out our emergency ‘out of hours’ telephone service to a contractor with appropriate experience. We expect the contractor to be able to offer a service 365 days a year when our offices are closed, to take calls and then, if necessary, to contact our own plumbers and electricians as well as specialist contractors to carry out any required emergency repairs. We are also looking to contract out the 24-hour community alarm service which is currently offered to approximately 550 older and disabled tenants. This service operates 24 hours a day 365 days a year and enables customers to get help when they raise the alarm in an emergency. Some services are provided through ateb’s Independent Living Team (extra care and sheltered homes) and some are provided to customers dispersed across the association’s general needs properties. We currently offer an out of hours service using our own staff operating a rota service to respond to calls, and existing heating and plumbing engineers, as well as external contractors to carry out emergency repairs. We currently use a contractor for our community alarm scheme for handling emergencies for our older and disabled customers. The contractor will need to have the relevant software and systems to connect with and receive calls from the current Tunstall systems (and any other provider should the systems be changed during the contract) installed in the Independent Living properties and for the dispersed alarms provision. We are ideally looking to contract out both services to one contractor.