On 10 July 2019 professional painters employed by the Armour Hart group begin work on the £400,000 + contract to repair and repaint the external fabric of all 28 Blocks on the HHGE. The repairs are scheduled to take until 30 September 2020 i.e. 14 months with approximately 2 blocks out of 28 completed each month. The first block was 1-6 Ayr Court.
Many of the wooden window frames suffer from extensive wood rot (denatured wood ) and require repair with specialized materials. At a rough count there are currently approximately 20 major wood repairs required to the window frames in the 6 flats in Block 1-6 Ayr Court. Using the correct materials and procedures, the repair work is very time consuming and very expensive.
This is a very recently completed repair using a Repair Care product Dry-Flex 4 to a section of rotten wood on one of the ground floor bay windows at Block 1-6 Ayr Court. Carried out properly a large repair such as the one shown above can cost over £80 in materials.

According to Repair-Care Professional surveyors who examined the wood repairs on Friday 19 July 2019, these repairs including the one shown above carried out by the Armour Hart employees are “not acceptable”

(1) The wrong preparation tools had been used in the wrong way. (2) The specified primer Dry Fix-4 had not been used (3) The filler material Dry-Flex 4 had not been applied correctly. (4) The wood inserts had been incorrectly fixed and not properly treated prior to use. (5) As there was extensive wood rot that has spread from outside the flat to inside the flat the rotten interior wood should have been repaired at the same time as the exterior woodwork and not left for later (as is standard procedure for the Armour Hart decorators working on the HHGE flats).

Accordingly the Repair-Care surveyors recommended that all the wood repair work carried out by the Armour Hart decorators between 10-19 July 2019 on Block 1-6 Ayr Court should be stripped out and started again.

The 3 professional, very experienced, on site decorators working on the job at 1-6 Ayr Court between 10-19 July have professed ignorance. They told the Repair-Care surveyors that they had never been trained to use Repair Care products properly and would be more than willing to learn and use the correct products in the future.

This is the Repair-Care product Dry Flex 4 used by the Armour Hart decorators to repair holes in the rotten wooden window frames at Block 1-6 Ayr Court between 10-19 July. This product was specified by AkzoNobel Decorative Paints UK Ltd the manufacturers of the Dulux white gloss paint which was also specified for the final finish coats to the window frames. AkzoNobel paint system was used by the Contract Administrator John Chandler to specify the paints and materials for this job..

SOME FACTS

01: Repair Care products are the preferred product recommended by professionals such as architects and surveyors for repairs to rotten wood where very long term quality results are required for heritage buildings such as the HHGE flats. Repair-Care guarantee their products and the results for 10 years provided they have been applied by an operative who has been trained by Repair Care according to an approved specification.

02: Repair-Care products are relatively very expensive and must be applied with specified Repair-Care tools and and time consuming procedures compared with other quick and easy widely used products such as Ronseal Woodfiller . For example to repair a 330 ml hole in rotten wood with Ronseal Woodfiller would cost around £ 9.50 whilst if Repair-Care products were used the cost would be £87 and would take several times as long (hours instead of minutes).

3. The Armour Hart group is managed and part owned (50% of the voting shares) by Stephen Gary Pennington.