CareHomeDeskCareHomeDeskThe plain English explainer -- what SOR is, what it isn't, and how care home providers use it every day.
The National Housing Federation Schedule of Rates (NHF SOR) is a published list of unit prices for maintenance and repair tasks in residential buildings. Think of it as a price list for building maintenance: repair a cracked soil pipe: X; replace a fire door closer: X; re-render a 2m section of external wall: X. Created for the social housing sector, it is used across care home, extra care and supported living property management as a transparent basis for pricing maintenance contracts and checking contractor quotes.
The schedule covers every trade involved in building maintenance: groundworks, drainage, masonry, roofing, carpentry, plastering, plumbing, heating, electrical, glazing, and decoration. For each task it provides a unit rate at a base rate calibrated to the South East of England, with regional adjustment factors for the rest of the UK.
The NHF SOR is not a maximum price -- contractors can legitimately charge more where project conditions justify it. It is not a binding contract rate unless both parties agree to it. It is not exhaustive -- specialist tasks may not have a direct SOR equivalent. Use it as a benchmark, not as a substitute for competitive tendering on significant projects.
Using NHF SOR as a budget-setting tool allows care home managers to produce defensible cost estimates for maintenance work without needing detailed quantity surveying knowledge. If you need to budget for replacing 20 fire door closers, the SOR gives you a per-item rate from which you can build a reasonable estimate -- far more reliable than asking for a quote from a single contractor with no basis for comparison.
The NHF SOR is published and sold by the National Housing Federation (housing.org.uk). It is also embedded in a number of property management software platforms used by housing associations and care providers. CareHomeDesk does not use NHF SOR as its pricing basis -- its own rate library is built from a range of published UK trade sources, each individually cited.
CareHomeDesk gives you compliance checklists, maintenance logs, and contractor management tools built around exactly this kind of knowledge.