Mears

Mears Group is a unique organisation, employing more than 8000 people maintaining and improving homes as well as caring for the people living in them.

As a leading social housing repairs and maintenance provider, Mears delivers rapid response and planned maintenance services to Local Authorities and Registered Social Landlords. Making over 3,000 repairs every day and completing 250 Decent Homes each week to a portfolio of over 500,000 houses nationwide.

As the UK’s fastest growing domiciliary care provider, Careforce delivers over
4,500,000 hours of care per annum working with over 50 Local Authorities.

Case Study:

Download a PDF copy of the case study.

Left to right: Jo Hammonds, Group Fleet and Quality Manager, Mears and Jonathan Moffitt, Auditel Consultant

Auditel Consultant, Jonathan Moffitt met Andrew Smith the Financial Director of Mears in March 2007. With over 50 offices throughout the UK, Mears needed help in managing the cost-effectiveness of their 600 plus fixed phone lines and better organisation of their utilities supplies.

Andrew asked Jonathan to complete an audit at their offices in Hackney and Stevenage. Whilst Jonathan focused on electricity, gas and water he called on the services of another member of the Auditel network to undertake the fixed phone line review. Andrew was impressed when Jonathan showed him projected savings of £8,000 for Hackney and a rebate of £9,200 for Stevenage so he rolled out the Auditel service to all 50 sites.

The Auditel team was then introduced to Jo Hammonds, Group Fleet and Quality Manager. His key criteria were good savings and the correct suppliers including green energy where possible. In 2007, Jonathan obtained a saving of £18,000 on electricity for one year. In 2008, he negotiated for a new electricity contract and obtained a 100% green contract for three years. This is predicted to show savings of approximately £8000 per year.

By conducting a similar process for gas, Jonathan saved £1,500 a year. Jo Hammond comments,“Jonathan has successfully managed the transition of all 26 of our electricity supplies to a new contract, overcoming the objections from our previous provider. As well as the substantial annual savings he has even recovered rebates and negotiated a full refund of over £9,000”

One of the most important stages of Auditel’s work was the thorough review of Mears telecoms. Jonathan comments “In analysing Mears’ telecoms we were faced with a complex telecoms infrastructure which changes frequently due to office and staff moves. Moreover, Mears was keen to continue with their incumbent supplier”. The first stage revealed a substantial rebate of more than £10,000 due to incorrect billing. Auditel then worked with Mears staff to develop savings across five areas of costs, ranging from simple cancellations of superceded facilities, to complex renegotiations of tariffs and rentals generally. This programme has saved over £49,000 in the first year. Savings are projected to rise to a substantial £100,000 a year. This has been achieved with current supplier, and a useful sideeffect has been a sharpening-up of the suppliers own account team support to Mears. Jo Hammond comments “We really appreciate the savings, and the fact that our IT Operational Support Team no longer has the hassle of managing our telecoms costs unaided meaning they can concentrate on their core role; supporting business changes and daily operations”.

Jo has been so pleased with the work conducted by Auditel he’s asked Jonathan to review the utilities expenditure at a Mears subsidiary; Careforce Group. On top of this work, Jonathan will continue to manage Mears’ expenditure”

Savings Achieved:

£24,000 Electricity
£8,500 Electricity Rebate
£49,000 Telecoms
£10,5000 Telecoms Rebate
£1,300 Gas
£300 – Gas Rebate
£400 Water Rebate

Total Savings to date: £94,000

Download a PDF copy of the case study.