Tender
Harbour Homes tests the market for a ten year repairs contract
By Staff Writer | 01-09-2026
Harbour Homes Scotland Limited has opened market engagement on a repairs, maintenance and voids term contract running from 1 April 2027 to 31 March 2037, against an estimated total value of 58,250,000 pounds excluding value added tax. The prior information notice, identifier 082411-2026, was published on the United Kingdom tender service at 13:40 on 31 August 2026. It is a request for feedback and not a contract notice, and the landlord expects to publish the contract notice on 9 November 2026.
The buyer is recorded on the notice as Harbour Homes Scotland Limited, formerly Port of Leith Housing Association Ltd, of 108 Constitution Street, Leith, and is classified as a body governed by public law whose main activity is housing and community amenities. The place of performance is given as the City of Edinburgh.
Ten years without an extension option is a long commitment for a landlord of this size, and it is the term rather than the figure that will decide who bids.
What the notice sets out
The scope is described as a proposed repairs, maintenance and voids term contract covering the ten years from 1 April 2027, with a maximum duration of ten years and no extension options. The landlord states that the service will include services to Harbour Lettings and that this will require a separate agreement and a separate service level agreement. The requirement is classified under repair and maintenance services and is not divided into lots.
The stated purpose of the notice is to gather feedback. The landlord says it wants to investigate the contracting market across Edinburgh and the Lothians to identify potential contractors who may be interested in forming a partnership, and it invites comments either through the questions platform on the Scottish procurement portal or by email to its asset management and procurement consultant. A scope document is attached to the notice.
The figure, and what it is not
The 58,250,000 pounds is an estimated total value on a planning notice. It is not a contract sum, it is not committed spend, and no contract has been let. It is what the landlord currently expects the ten year service to cost across the whole term. Reading a planning estimate as an award is the single most common way a procurement figure gets reported wrongly, and nothing on this notice supports treating it as one.
Across ten years the figure works out at a little under six million pounds a year, which is the number a contractor will actually price against. The notice publishes no stock numbers, no property count, no void turnaround targets and no breakdown between responsive repairs, planned maintenance and voids, so none is stated here.
Why the term matters
A ten year term with no extension option is unusual. Most repairs and maintenance term contracts in the social housing sector run for a shorter initial period with one or two extensions held back as a performance lever, which lets a landlord exit a poor performer without a full re-procurement. A single fixed ten year commitment removes that lever and puts the weight on the contract conditions instead: the key performance indicators, the deduction mechanism, and whatever break rights the eventual contract carries.
It also shifts risk onto price. A contractor pricing a decade of responsive repairs has to take a view on labour cost, materials inflation and stock condition over that whole period, and the indexation provisions become the most important commercial terms in the document. None of that is published on a prior information notice, which is precisely why the landlord is asking the market before it drafts one.
The word the landlord uses is partnership. That language usually signals an intention to run something other than a straightforward measured term contract, with shared data, open book cost and joint performance management. Whether that is what emerges is not established by this notice.
The notice names no incumbent contractor, no procurement route for the eventual competition, no evaluation split between quality and price, and no lotting strategy beyond confirming that this contract is not divided into lots. It states that the procurement is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement. Interested parties are directed to register their interest through the Scottish procurement portal against reference 841611.
The contract notice is estimated for 9 November 2026, which leaves roughly ten weeks for the market to respond and for the landlord to settle its strategy before the competition opens.