From 1 December 2018, we are introducing a new organisational structure for the Projects and Maintenance & Technical Services teams within the Estates Department.   These changes will facilitate the delivery of improvements around governance, strategy, asset management, statutory compliance, financial and project management as well as the long term maintenance of the estate.

The Maintenance & Technical Services function will be responsible for the delivery of a coherent maintenance plan for the estate including: long term maintenance of the infrastructure, investment planning, business continuity, compliance assurance, minor works projects, planned and reactive maintenance.

The Projects team will focus on the delivery of major capital projects and high value minor works.  Systems and processes will be refined with new arrangements introduced for the approval, planning, monitoring, management and reporting of all projects.

The new structures of these teams and of the overall Estates Department can be viewed on our web page. You can also view and download the Estates booklet ‘Who we are, what we do and where we are going’ from our web pages. This booklet includes an overview of our strategic vision, core values, key objectives and team structure.

These changes demonstrate our commitment to continuously improve our services and meet the needs of our customers.  The feedback from our inaugural Customer Feedback Survey, conducted earlier this year, highlighted that 83% of our customers feel Estates Department staff act professionally, however there were some areas for improvement, notably around transparency in our operations and how we communicate to our customers.

We are addressing these issues and launched the Estates Customer Services Centre in June this year.  The Centre acts as the key contact point for all enquiries regarding services provided by the Estates Department.  The Customer Services Advisers take complete ownership of all enquiries, ensuring customers are kept fully informed on the progress of their enquiry.  We have introduced a Customer Services Policy and a robust complaints procedure for customers to use when they are not totally happy with the service they have received.

Our Customer Services Policy explains our guiding principles and can be found on our web pages here: Customer Services Policy.

The Customer Services team can be contacted by email: estatescustomerservices@kent.ac.uk or by telephone: extension 16666 (or if dialling externally: 01227 816 666).

Peter Czarnomski

Director of Estates