Ashley & McDonough Wins Central Heating Scheme Installation Programme with The Guinness Partnership

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Ashley & McDonough continues to experience rapid expansion, with a successful 2024 already underway. One of our most recent successes was the securement of a large communal heating scheme installation programme with the social landlord, The Guinness Partnership.

Founded in 1890 with a mission to provide great homes and services, The Guinness Partnership takes pride in being one of Britain’s largest affordable housing and care providers. They manage and own over 65,000 homes in the UK and provide care services to around 135,000 customers.

By winning this programme with the Guinness Partnership, Ashley & McDonough will install a central network that supplies heating and hot water to single building blocks that contain multiple homes and occupants within. By utilising one central boiler instead of individual boilers for each home, community heating will result in an efficient and cost-effective option for both landlords and their residents. 

It is important to us that we build partnerships with organisations that share the same values as Ashley & McDonough. Our whole ethos centres on providing quality services that, in turn, create better places to live and work. We are extremely happy that the Guinness Partnership’s values align with ours on many fronts. They strive to deliver top-quality services, improve the spaces we live in, and be a good employer and a successful business. Accepting a contract with such a like-minded organisation was a no-brainer.

The Guinness Partnership is constantly making strides towards fulfilling its purpose. After a recent re-accreditation, it became the first housing association in the United Kingdom to be awarded an enhanced accreditation status for its fantastic response to domestic abuse cases by the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance. First accredited in 2020 for their approach to raising awareness about domestic abuse, this re-accreditation offers another fantastic achievement for the Partnership and further re-aligns their values.

Ashley & McDonough’s high standard of work and intricate understanding of customer needs impressed the board at The Guinness Partnership enough to award us the contract. We cannot wait to get started!

The ‘Uber’ Customer Experience comes to Social Housing Compliance.

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The ‘Uber’ Customer Experience comes to Social Housing Compliance.

Ashley & McDonough Compliance Services are excited to announce an innovative collaboration with a leading software company Joblogic.

Ashley & McDonough have invested in the Joblogic system to improve the customer experience for social housing boiler installation, repairs, and servicing, and electrical installations, periodic test, and repairs. Our social housing customers will now be able to benefit from the same experience that ‘Uber’ have pioneered in the taxi industry or ‘Amazon’ in the retail industry.

Joblogic provide clients with 24/7 access to their job data through an easy to use self-service portal. Accessible from any device the portal gives complete transparency to clients and includes kpi reports, uploads of gas safety certificates, asset registers and job history. Clients can also approve quotes and download copy invoices on demand.

Customers can log reactive jobs via the portal saving time on the phone reporting issues. The portal is a key tool in keeping open communication between the client and Ashley & McDonough to maximise the performance of the contract.

In addition to planning and scheduling service visits, Joblogic has an automated email and SMS service like ‘Uber’ technology, to keep residents fully up to date with the status of the service, installation or repair.

From appointment booking through to completion, the resident will receive texts and emails, displaying all the ‘real-time’ relevant job information. When engineers are travelling to a customer’s home, the resident will be shown the name of the engineer, their photo ID and the ETA. The screen even shows the engineer’s current location on a map.  This is really useful so that customers do not have to sit at home waiting for hours for an engineer to turn up. Instead they can carry on with their normal day and make sure they’re home in time to greet the engineer.

On completion of the job the customers will receive a text or email with the full job report including photos and if appropriate a copy of their gas safety certificate.

Ashley & McDonough Compliance Services and Joblogic share the same ethos. Both companies are committed to using technology to drive efficiency and improve the overall customer journey within social housing.

Mike Ashley, Managing Director said  “We believe that we are breaking new ground by implementing ‘Uber’ style technology. As far back as 1959, when Ashley & McDonough was formed, William Ashley was delivering on his promises to his customers to deliver excellent levels of service.  The same ethos my dad – William adopted continues, and by investing in the company through technology, staff development, specialist support, and a focus on customer service, we want to stamp our reputation for traditional values coupled with a great customer service.”

Ashley & McDonough Compliance Services manages the gas, electrical and legionella compliance, repairs, reactive and installs in both domestic and commercial properties for social housing customers, and public sector customers, and just like William did 50 years ago, we make sure we deliver on our promises.

To contact Ashley & McDonough Compliance Services – please call Mike Ashley or Jane Cunningham on 0151 4306191. Or email [email protected]

How to fix your central heating

How to fix your central heating – Troubleshooting checklist

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There could be a number of reasons why your central heating or hot water isn’t working.

You can fix several problems yourself, avoiding a callout and – Try these tips first:

  • Check the gas, electrical and water supplies to the appliance are turned on. It’s surprising how easily they can get accidentally switched off.
  • Check the thermostat is turned up and the clock timer is on.
  • Some boilers have a pressure gauge showing system water pressure, this usually needs to be at around 1 bar
  • Got a system with a permanent pilot light? Check that it hasn’t gone out – this is a very common problem with older appliances.
  • Try putting your heating on maximum for a short while to see if you can get it back into action.
  • Have the clocks gone forward or back? Your clock programmer might just need adjusting to the right time.
  • Has there been a power cut recently? Your heating clock programmer may have returned to its factory settings when the power came back on. Test the central heating by setting it to come on in 15 minutes time – if that works, simply re-enter your preferred settings.
  • Do you have a customer-operated reset switch (not one that needs you to remove any casing)? These are usually found on the front of modern boilers: check your user manual to see if it needs re-setting.
  • Try turning the electrical supply to the boiler off and on – the switch is usually near the boiler or in the airing cupboard. This might reset your boiler and resolve the problem.
  • Could you have frozen pipes? In periods of long, cold weather, the condensate pipe of your boiler can freeze.
  • Are other gas appliances affected? If so the problem is bigger and you need to book an engineer.