Five contractors – Mears, Morrisons, Roalco, Willmott Dixon and gas boiler specialist WRB – have secured places on the huge repairs and maintenance programme.

Gosford-based Home Group manages 51,000 homes, generating a £350m turnover and housing more than 70,000 people across the UK.

Morrison’s contract is worth £98m over seven years. It covers responsive repairs, planned maintenance and enhanced annual servicing to all heating systems including solar and photo voltaic cells.

The new service will start this February 2012 and cover all of Home Group’s properties across the North East region.

Willmott Dixon’s deal is worth £147m over seven years and will see it maintain 9,700 homes primarily across Cumbria and the Lake District at a value of £14m per year, and a further 7,000 properties from North Yorkshire to Milton Keynes for around £7m per year.

Jim Preston, director of customer service property at Home Group said: “This is part of our process to continually develop and improve our service to all our customers.

“We look forward to welcoming our new contractors on board and building strong working relationships with them over the coming months on these new and challenging projects.”

Staff currently employed by Home Group to carry out repairs and maintenance have been given the chance to transfer to one of the five new repair contractors.