Introduction

FRC Group is one of the longest established and highest performing social businesses in the UK. From humble beginnings in 1988, FRC have grown our turnover, financial stability, employee numbers and level of impact year on year – we have doubled in size over the past five years and are continuing on this path.

Our social mission is to reduce and ultimately eradicate furniture poverty. We campaign to raise awareness of furniture poverty and create practical solutions to get furniture to people who need it. Our work also helps create sustainable employment and better futures for people.

Experience

We have supplied housing providers with furniture and appliances for over 35 years, initially using a standard purchase model. However over recent years our customers have required further services such as stock management, a repairs or replacement service.

We recognise our customers’ needs are ever evolving and there is no “one size fits all” solution when it comes to offering your tenants furniture and appliances to enable them to live comfortably in the homes you provide. It all depends on your strategic priorities, existing operations, and the needs of your tenants.

Understanding Landlords and Tenants

Our campaigning arm, End Furniture Poverty, has been working with social landlords across the UK to help them to understand furniture poverty and work with them to develop appropriate solutions. Increasingly that focus has been on the provision of furnished tenancies. Through these partnerships, End Furniture Poverty has developed a unique understanding of the barriers landlords can face when attempting to introduce a new furnished tenancy scheme.

FRC Group has worked closely End Furniture Poverty to create Furniture Flex, a furniture solution that overcomes those barriers.

Furniture Flex gives you, as housing providers, options over the way you can provide furniture and appliances to your tenants. You can purchase items outright or can rent items, or a mix of both depending on yours and your tenants needs.

The Benefits of Furniture Provision

For Your Organisation

  • Improved offer to tenants
  • Tenancy sustainment
  • Lower void rent loss
  • Lower rent arrears
  • Helps with hard to let properties
  • Build communities Income generation

For Your Tenants

  • Making a house a home
  • Financial resilience
  • Improved mental & physical health
  • Improved social well being

We provide our service across the whole of the UK. We’ve got the capacity and flexibility to take on any size of contract and there is no commitment on your part to furnish a set number of properties. You choose what you require, and you can choose whether to rent or purchase the items, you can design your own packs or leave it open and give your tenants choice determined by their individual needs.

You may decide only to offer the service to certain tenant groups, leaving care or tenants who have previously been homeless for example. In our experience we have found the most benefit for organisations is offering the service to all tenants, bearing in mind affordability of course.

Your Options with Furniture Flex

Purchase Model

With the purchase model you would buy the items outright. FRC will deliver, install, remove all the packaging, and demonstrate how to use appliances where required but the ownership of the products would pass to you.

You can either gift them to your tenants or add a service charge to the rent account and the tenant can rent the items the same way as they rent a property. The income from the service charges would be yours.

If a fault develops within the warranty period with the product, you or your tenant just needs to let FRC know, and we’ll arrange a visit by the manufacturer’s engineer. If possible, the engineer will repair on site, if not, a replacement will be booked in and FRC will deliver a new product to replace the faulty item, ensuring as little disruption as possible.

If the tenancy ends, you can either leave the items in situ for the next tenant or you can remove them to store for reuse later. As the products belong to you this would be for you to arrange.

Rental Model

With the rental model your organisation rents products from FRC. The ownership, liability, repairs, and replacements are all the responsibility of FRC. Each item has a weekly rental cost, your tenant chooses what they need, the individual costs are added up to give the total weekly cost. FRC will deliver, install, remove all the packaging, and demonstrate how to use appliances where required. However, ownership of the products remains with FRC. We will charge you a weekly rental fee, you add a service charge to your tenants rent account to cover the costs, you can also add an administration charge which covers the small amount of administration required by your staff.

If a product develops a fault, you or tenant just needs to let FRC know, and we’ll arrange a visit by the manufacturer’s engineer. If possible, the engineer will repair on site, if not, a replacement will be booked in and FRC will deliver a new product to replace the faulty item. Even if the product is out of warranty, or it has been damaged by the tenant accidentally, FRC will replace the product, all repairs and replacements are covered in the weekly rental cost, there are no extra or hidden charges.

If the tenancy ends, you just need to let us know, we will collect the products and end all charges. When a new tenant moves in, if they require a furniture package then a new pack will be delivered.

All items returned to our warehouse will be cleaned, repaired and where possible used in the rental scheme for future tenants.

For more information, email Andrew.Waters@FRCGroup.co.uk