Onward Homes is bringing its new centralised call centre to their Lancashire headquarters on Enterprise Way in Accrington, creating 40 full-time jobs.
The housing association, which is the largest provider of social housing with homes solely in the North West, will also be investing more than half a million pounds in modernising, upgrading and reconfiguring its existing office to accommodate the new contact centre and the regional hub for Lancashire.
Accrington has been chosen as the location for its regional hub due to its excellent transport links – good bus and train services and close to the motorway network, and its strong, non-transient labour market to recruit from in the town.
Recruitment will start this month (June) with the first cohort of contact centre staff starting their training in August. The new facility will be fully operational by April 2019. It will accommodate 50 contact staff in total, who will handle enquiries for all 35,000 properties in the North West housing more than 87,000 people.
Alastair Cooper, executive director of operations for Onward said: “We wanted to create a single customer contact centre to ensure consistency and quality of service for all our tenants. Customer experience is paramount to our future and a single contact centre allows us to adapt quickly, support the development of colleagues and align with our digital services as they evolve. Accrington offers Onward a scalable, future proof operation which is viable for the long term and brings valuable investment to the town.”
