Beeston based independent car garage, Jim Steel Garage Services has been awarded a contract with Nottingham City Homes (NCH) worth £2 million.

The contract will see Jim Steel Garage provide maintenance and repair services for Nottingham City Homes’ new fleet of 312 vehicles over the next five years.

Nottingham City Homes is responsible for the day to day management of around 29,000 city council-owned homes and 1,000 leasehold properties. The ‘arms length’ management organisation has recently scrapped its old car fleet of 350 vehicles appointed Jim Steel Garage Services to take over the maintenance of its new fleet. Maintenance services will include breakdown, tyres, glass and bodywork.

Jim Steel Garage Services, which also services vehicles for the Nottingham contingencies of TSB, Zenith and Hatachi, is currently seeking additional premises in Nottingham within one mile of the NCH Harvey Road main depot. This will bring new jobs to the north west of Nottingham, helping to improve employment rates in the area.

Initially established in 1982 as a car sales business, founder of the garage, Jim Steel had been buying and selling cars on the premises for 12 years when he decided to extend his services to include repairs, which is when his eldest son Kevin joined him. After 18 months the business was going so well it had to move to larger premises, and its current home, on Station Road. It has remained a family business.

Kevin said, “We are thrilled to have won this work with Nottingham City Homes. It is the largest contract we have had to date and hope this marks the next phase of development for the business. We are a growing outfit and this contract will see us double our staff. We pride ourselves on leading the way in car services in Nottingham and were the first independent garage in the East Midlands to win the UK quality Kitemark. We continually invest in state-of-the-art disgnostics and quality equipment to be able service the full spectrum of cars in the market.”

The Citroen Dispatch and Relay vans are being leased as part of the £142m repairs contract that was awarded to NCH by Nottingham City Council earlier this year. Nottingham City Homes beat large private sector companies in a tendering process to be awarded the contract, which was successful based on value for money and quality of work.

The old fleet is now being replaced at a rate of six vans per day and there are currently more than 50 vans running on the streets of Nottingham. The entire fleet will be fully operational by the end of October this year.

The vans were officially launched at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground on Tuesday 12th August as part of a Meet the Supplier event.

Pete Smith, Procurement and Operational Support Manager at NCH, said: “This new contract with Jim Steel Garage Services was an integral part of our deal for the new fleet of vans. It was important to us that we had a service close to our depot. It is also fantastic that we now have a breakdown service that allows our drivers to get straight back onto the road in a replacement van as soon as the staff from Jim Steel Garages arrive.

“I look forward to working with the team and in seeing the benefits this will make to our craft workers as they drive out in their new fleet of vans.”

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For more information contact Kevin Steel on: 0115 9227944 or e-mail on: kevinsteel1@aol.com