PROUDLY SERVING COMMUNITIES

PROUDLY SERVING COMMUNITIES

HTS Group are committed to continual investment. Stories explores the work of our very own Local Authority Trading Company.

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HTS GROUP LTD IS A LOCAL Authority Trading Company (LATCo) set up and wholly owned by Harlow Council which commenced trading in February 2017.

HTS Group currently consists of two companies HTS (Property & Environment) Ltd and HTS (Housing & Regeneration) Ltd.

The original purpose of setting up HTS Group Ltd was to take all aspects of Housing and Non-Housing Repairs and Maintenance, Environmental Services and a level of Capital and Planned Works under a trading company HTS (Property & Environment) Ltd, and deliver these services, creating a profit that is

returned to our shareholder, Harlow Council. In addition, we ensure positive contributions to the local community.

Late in 2020, HTS Group Ltd established HTS (Housing & Regeneration) Ltd, specifically to regenerate and provide housing available to Harlow Council in the form of purchasing and refurbishing homes to very high standards and letting them at either social, affordable or commercial rents, whilst looking for future redevelopment and new build opportunities.

HTS purchased and refurbished their first five properties for let and have just begun their first property redevelopment and new build homes.

At a national level, HTS are one of the founding members of the LATCo Network which has been set up to share the knowledge and experience gained by the formation of LATCo’s by local authorities.

Our journey of just over 4 years since we started trading has been exciting, eventful and successful.

We are very proud of our achievements. We have worked hard to provide local jobs for Harlow’s people with 70% of our employees living locally. Keeping the Harlow ££’s in Harlow is important to us and 66% of our spend is with local companies.

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HTS Housing and Regeneration transformproperties creating homes for the community

The core values at theheart of our business are:

- Customer Satisfaction - Ethics - People - Leadership and Accountability - Quality - Safety and the Environment - Social Responsibility

We have been measured by an external, independent body over 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 and are reported to have produced £2.1million of social impact value over this period. We hope to be able to issue our next social impact report and contribution to the community for 2020/2021 in September.

In addition to this we have returned over £2.75M in profit to Harlow Council that would otherwise have gone to National Contractors, at the same time reinvesting in fleet and plant renewals including the purchasing of electric vehicles.

Our work in the community on education has

“We have returned over £2.75 million in profit to Harlow Council to reinvest in the community.”

covered most (if not all) of the academies and the college in Harlow on such things as mock interviews, careers carousels and work experience jobs fairs and we have voluntary governors serving on various academies and schools.

We have a rolling year on year programme of up to ten apprentices/trainees three apprentices complete their training in 2021, we will be employing a further four across carpentry and finance sections. Several of

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Award-winning customer service

our apprentices having won apprentice of the year awards through Harlow College, and HTS also won awards for employer engagement and best new business following our first year of trading.

An assessment of our employees shows that 10% of our work force would as likely qualify under the Equality Act 2010 as disabled where we are an accredited Disability Confident employer alongside our minimum pay rate, including for apprentices, as set by the Living Wage Foundation.

We work in partnership with a range of local charities and not-for-profit organisations such as St Clare Hospice, Rainbow Services, Harlow Save Credit Union and Employability to name but a few. HTS have serving trustees or non-executive director positions to support various organisations.

Central to HTS has been our sponsoring, supporting and participation in local events such The Great Get Together, Harlow Showcase and sponsoring and presenting at local awards ceremonies.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we proactively managed to maintain our emergency, urgent and essential services whilst at the same time ensuring we are a Covid Secure company signed off under out trade union and the HSE standards. The welfare and wellbeing of our employees continues to be central to our operation. In doing this, we have managed to achieve a 95% success rate against a suite of 57 KPI’s for the year.

Despite the backdrop of the pandemic, HTS have won national and Gold awards across Health & Safety and Corporate Social Responsibility

For the last nine months, HTS have facilitated a Covid-19 testing centre at our depot and we provide welfare facilities to the NHS staff who have worked there, this on-going.

Despite the backdrop of the pandemic, HTS have still been able to be assessed by a number of external bodies and won national Gold awards across Health and Safety from The Royal Society of Prevention for Accidents (RoSPA), a distinction award from the British Safety Council and behind these we are pleased to have achieved 1 million reportable accident free (RIDDOR) hours. In addition, receiving an award for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) services to the community by The Green Organisation, that reflects one of the core principles and visions of HTS as being independently recognised as a company that has a heart.

We are proud of our accreditations that have been achieved which include Customer Service Excellence which is a government backed industry standard that assesses whether services are efficient, effective, excellent, equitable and empowering, using 57 different criteria. These along with our international accreditations ISO 9001 for the Environment, 14001 on Quality Systems and

45001 on Occupational Health and Safety. Together with our Shareholder we have significant ambitions to grow our business both by increasing the current work we do for both Harlow Council and other public sector clients and to diversify into delivery of new technologies and services. All of the above has led to a ‘Best Value Review’ (BVR) by our shareholder and the successful award of a 5 extension to our contract.

In conclusion we are and continue to be proud of our hard-working and dedicated employees who are proudly serving the people of Harlow. The continued commitment and strong work ethic of our employees has been even more prominent during this most challenging of times.

To find out more about HTS Group follow them on LinkedIn or their latest news here: www.htsgroupltd.co.uk/news/

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