Belle Vale is a busy shopping centre in Liverpool, the centre has a loyal and regular customer base and is the heart of the Belle Vale community.  The Centre holds regular charity fundraising events which thrust it into the media and public eye.

Anchor have provided the cleaning service at Belle Vale since 2008 and in February 2012 were awarded the security service and most recently were awarded the car park management service in Oct 2013.  Now a Tri-services contract Belle Vale benefits from all service working in synergy to support each other and offer maximum value to the Client. 

The challenge:

Having successfully supplied cleaning services to the Centre for a number of years Anchor were approached to tender for security services.  Through our experience and knowledge of the Centre gained providing the cleaning service we were able to identify the following problems:
•    The service delivery suffered from a lack of contract management 
•    The security staff were suffering from a lack of management support from the current provider
•    Security staff were generally poorly trained and there was no scope for further training
•    Staff had a number of outstanding uniform requests and uniform being worn was not up to the desired standards
•    There was a distinct lack of trained cover and often during periods of sickness or holiday untrained staff were assigned to the site or duties were left uncovered.

The morale of the security team had begun to suffer from the lack of support they were receiving and in turn this was beginning to have an adverse effect on the security service. 

The solution:
As soon as we were awarded the contract at Belle Vale we appointed a dedicated Contract Manager, throughout mobilisation and the TUPE consultation phase this manager was present on site to offer significant support to the existing team.  A contract management plan was put in place and fortnightly visits to both the team and the centre were scheduled.  We also added the centre to our mobile supervisors running sheet to in turn provide further out of hours support.

Each officer had a training plan agreed and implemented all training was scheduled to be completed within the first six months of the contract with further and more advanced training, such as NVQ training still ongoing.

To address the cover issues Anchor provided two dedicated relief officers from our team of Multi Site Officers and have gradually trained additional cover so we can offer the Centre a team of trained cover who are trained and certified to the correct standards and are familiar with the daily routine and the existing team.  This enables us to ensure that there is never a drop in the standard of service regardless of the officer we place on site.

As a dual services contract we were able to offer the Centre staff additional management support by providing a significant increase in presence of the Anchor Management Team.  All of our contract managers, whether it be security, cleaning or parking remain very approachable and are happy to support any employee regardless of the service they are delivering.

The Result
Anchor’s successful relationship with the Client has continued to flourish and the awarding of the further Parking service is testament to that.  

We now have a happy and motivated team of Security, Cleaning and Parking operatives who are working together in line with the Centre's goals and are all pulling in the same direction.  The increased morale of the team has resulted in a higher standard of service being delivered across the board and KPI scores continue to reflect this.