The Challenge

Rochdale Boroughwide Housing’s (RBH) Supported Housing Team provides a range of services to older and potentially vulnerable people across Rochdale to support them to live safely and independently. The team manages 26 sheltered housing schemes across the borough, which are home to over 1,200 older people. It offers a clustered support service to people living in or near sheltered schemes, with daily or weekly check visits, a regular support review, a monitored community alarm and an out of hours responder service.

What are the benefits of placing its community alarm service contract with the original equipment manufacturer?

What We Did

RBH and Tunstall have been working together for 20 years, installing and servicing community alarm systems and telecare solutions throughout the community. The 26 sheltered housing schemes have either Tunstall Communicall Vision or Communicall Connect community alarm systems installed, door entry systems linked to residents’ TVs and some have additional telecare devices.

Wardens are onsite at the schemes from Monday to Friday during working hours, but may cover multiple sites. The community alarm  systems give RBH the ability to deploy staff flexibly, as wardens are able to quickly and easily switch the alarm system to offsite status,  enabling the response centre to monitor any calls from the scheme in their absence.

Tunstall provides a dedicated engineer service, whereby whenever possible the same engineer will visit each scheme, enabling them to  gain a thorough understanding of the scheme, its equipment and  needs of the customer. This ensures better communication and swift and effective resolution to any system failures.

The contract includes a maximum response time, where engineers will attend site within 24 hours to address any faults with the community alarm or door entry systems, except in the case of high priority faults, which are responded to within 4 hours.