Service improvements

You told us scaffolding took too long, had a huge impact on your home and was often up longer than you expected. Our new roofing contractor doesn’t need scaffolding and uses a telehandler where possible. This means we have been able cut waiting times for roof repairs and customers are less affected by the impact of scaffolding against their homes. Although we will occasionally have to use scaffolding, this is a great result.

The Small Works Team has been introduced to take on larger maintenance jobs. This means they are no longer within the Responsive Repairs Team freeing up operative time to get to more responsive repairs so they can be completed quicker meaning shorter waiting times for customers.

The Scheduling Team now check if a job has parts on order and ensures that the appointment is booked for at least three days after the new part is due to be in stock. The Scheduling Team will also be checking three days before appointment dates to make sure the part has arrived. If the part hasn't arrived, then the job will be moved back, and the customer will be informed. This will allow the customer enough notice to make any rearrangements.

Concerns with communal cleaning have now been addressed and all areas will now be covered by either a caretaker or our contractor, Town and Country. We’ve also resolved issues around access for cleaners to make sure we can get into all communal areas to be cleaned.

Your feedback has been shared with the Estate Services Team and our contractor Just Ask. We have been working closing with them to improve the services you receive. New maps are being drawn up for Just Ask to follow, based on feedback from both customers and Just Ask that some areas requiring grounds maintenance were not clear, resulting in areas being missed, or other areas were being managed that were not within the contract. The Estate Services Team has also appointed an Estate Contract Manager to work with Just Ask, based on complaint and other feedback, to resolve issues.

The Aftercare and Defects Team have recruited more staff to help with demand and improve response times. We’ve improved the home user guide which customers receive to make it clearer and easier to follow. Our Executive Leadership Team have also worked closely with developers to make sure any concerns raised by customers are addressed in a more efficient manner.

The wait times on the phones can sometimes be longer than we’d like. This can be because of things such as the weather, rent review, and other communications affecting the Customer Communications Centre. Annual leave, sickness, and colleague promotions may also result in longer than expected wait times. This year, we have developed the my.account repairs reporting tool, allowing many repairs to be submitted through the portal without making a phone call.

We are improving our triage system when we receive a report of ASB, this will help us to collect as much information as possible whilst given customers more information on who else can help and what will happen next.

This year we have set up a communication calendar. All communication that is sent to more than one person is added to a calendar. The documents will be checked through by the Comms team and will also be approved for sending by the Customer Communication Centre (CCC); this way we can time when to send things to make sure the the CCC are prepared.

It can take quite a while to set up a direct debit over the phone, now if customers want to do it themselves, they can set up their own Direct Debit through my.account instead of having to call us.

Following feedback from complaints, TSM and general engagement we have been holding listening sessions to find out what is important to shared owner customers. We are working through a Home Ownership satisfaction plan which is monitored by SIP. We are focusing improving communication, by improving the type of information, and how it is received.

We invited customers to give us their feedback as we designed and built the new website – some even got involved in the procurement. We regularly make updates to the website following customer feedback – this includes changes after we have received complaints and need to make things clearer, if lots of customers are calling about the same thing or if we have feedback that something doesn’t make sense.