Birmingham council hopes to extend its current repairs and maintenance contracts following its contractors’ success in tackling thousands of overdue jobs.

Accord and AWG’s contracts, worth a total of £70m per year, are due to finish in March 2006.

But Birmingham has offered to extend them for another two years.

The council is understood to have decided it stands a better chance of improving on its zero-star inspection rating for repairs and maintenance by continuing its partnerships with the two firms.

The contractors helped the council to only narrowly miss a pledge to complete 40,000 repairs within six months.

Negotiations are under way but the council’s plan to set up a single IT system for logging repairs is understood to be a sticking point. At present both contractors have their own systems for this.