2014/15
Annual Report to Residents Accent South Annual Report to Residents Accent South
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2014/15 www.accentgroup.org
1. A great turn out at the Ballard Court summer fete. 2. A resident enjoying the entertainment at the Middlemoor Road family fun day. 3. A resident tries her hand at plate spinning at Windsor Court’s summer fete. 2. 3.
Great homes in great communities. That’s our vision for the places where we work. Our aim is to improve our homes and services year on year and to work in partnership with our communities to make them a success. And, in these challenging economic times, we are committed to running our business efficiently to deliver the best quality services
for the best value for money. We know our residents and communities face challenges. We are determined to work with you to rise to those challenges. We have listened to you and set targets for improving the things which matter to you most.
Our performance is checked by our regulator, the Homes and Communities Agency. This report sets out how we are doing where you live and how we will be looking to do even better in the year ahead.
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4. One of our younger residents enjoying Windsor Court’s summer fete. 5. One green fingered resident and his climbing plants in our 2015 Gardening Competition.
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Group highlights
Our perfomance – at a glance
• Spending £34m improving our homes.
• 97% of all calls answered.
• Improving our repairs service.
• 77% satisfaction with your services.
• Offering a better service for our customers who contact us.
• £5m invested in your homes. • 95% of your repairs completed first time.
• Developing around 400 homes for rent, shared ownership and sale, including the completion of our eight-year regeneration of the Fulbourn estate.
• 94% satisfaction with your repairs. • 93% of repairs appointments kept. • 324 new families re-housed.
• Investing more than £175,000 in community activities across our regions including youth schemes, digital inclusion and handyman services.
• 175 vulnerable residents helped. • 68% satisfaction with anti-social behaviour outcome.
• Helping more than 1000 residents and bringing in more than £200,000 in extra income through our money advice teams.
• £3.9m saved across Accent by better buying of goods and services.
We welcome your views on how we’re doing so please get in touch…
• Making big savings in the way we run our business so that we can deliver more on the frontline. • Tackling rent arrears and cutting the time homes are empty before they can be relet.
Annual Report to Residents Accent South
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2014/15 www.accentgroup.org
Keeping you involved We want to make it as easy as possible for you to contact us when you need to. You can get in touch in a variety of ways. We have introduced an 0345 phone number, which charges at a local rate, and our telephone opening hours now run from 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday and from 8am to 12pm on Saturday. Our local offices are open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. You can also contact us via text and email or log an enquiry via our website and we are also on Facebook and Twitter.
We run a number of local and regional consultation events with residents and we arrange transport to make it easier for you to come and have your say. Our initiatives also include monitoring groups for cleaning and grounds maintenance and ‘mums and dads’ group meetings to discuss service improvements. We have also launched ‘pre-tenancy training’ for those waiting for a home with us and will roll out further resident involvement schemes to help us improve our services such as re-letting homes quicker.
1. Residents enjoy each other’s company at Windsor Court summer fete.
Your homes 2. Collecting residents’ views is important for improving services.
Providing good quality homes is at the heart of what we do. We have set our own ‘Accent property standard’, which is higher than the decent homes standard that all homes should meet. It includes working to ensure all homes have features such as double glazing, over bath showers, hard-wired smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, extractor fans in kitchens and bathrooms, adequate loft insulation, anti-slip flooring and safe outdoor areas.
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How we’re doing: We have a programme in place for all of our homes to meet the decent homes standard by March 2016; 91.17% of them currently do so. All of our homes meet gas safety standards. Over the last year, we spent a total of more than £5m on repairs and improvements. Our repairs performance is improving. 95.2% of repairs were completed first time (up from 92.5%) and satisfaction with our repairs service rose to 93.9% (from 91.8%). 92.7% of repairs appointments were kept and on average it took 5.4 days to complete a repair. We will have a new regional repairs contract in place in April next year and will continue to work with our contractors to improve resident satisfaction with repairs.
What happens when things go wrong We have a robust complaints procedure. In the first instance, we would ask you to contact your housing officer to try to resolve your problem quickly. If need be, your complaint can be referred to a manager or the regional housing director. We have regular meetings with staff and residents to discuss complaints handling and we follow up cases with all residents who are unhappy with how their case has been handled.
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How we’re doing: Over the past year, our local offices dealt with 39,823 contacts from customers and answered 97% of calls. Our independent tenants’ survey shows 77% of residents were satisfied overall, and 51% with the way we listened and responded to their views. Of those who complained, 48% were satisfied with the way their complaint was handled and 32% with the outcome. We will be focusing on improving this over the next year.
2014/15 www.accentgroup.org
Your community We know that having a great place to live is about more than just your own home: it’s also about your neighbourhood and the opportunities it offers. That’s why we are determined to ensure our neighbourhoods are clean, safe and secure and to make tackling anti-social behaviour a priority.
We know that having a is about more than just Letting your homes
We have a range of schemes in place on our estates, including regular estate inspections, mobile caretaking and resident checks on cleaning and grounds maintenance. We have upgraded our CCTV equipment and installed cloud-view technology. We work closely with our partners to address anti-social behaviour, including supporting mediation schemes, family support and information sharing schemes.
It’s important that our homes are let in a fair, transparent and efficient way. We aim to offer a range of homes for different needs and to make the best use of our stock both for existing residents and for those who want a home. We want to make sure that when a resident leaves, their home can be re-let quickly to someone who needs it. And we also want to ensure that rents are collected efficiently.
How we’re doing We handled 188 referrals to our tenancy sustainability service and, of those, 175 accepted support. There were 64 anti-social behaviour cases reported to us: 68% were satisfied with the outcome of the case and 59% with the way it was handled. We aim to increase this figure in the year ahead.
In your area, we have a range of different housing options, from social and affordable rented homes to shared ownership and market rent properties. We work closely with local authorities to ensure homes are allocated effectively. We have a downsizing project to help those who now want a smaller home and a mutual exchange scheme for those who wish to swap with another tenant. We also offer support to those who may need help with budgeting or benefits advice to stay in their home.
As well as scrutinising our performance on managing empty homes (void properties), we will also be introducing full resident scrutiny of our anti-social behaviour case management this year. Our independent survey shows 76% of residents were satisfied with their neighbourhood as a place to live. 51% were satisfied that their service charge represents value for money.
Annual Report to Residents Accent South
How we’re doing Over the past year, we handled 324 lets. Our average re-let time was 23.6 days for our general needs housing and 18 days for sheltered housing. Our tenant arrears stood at 3.1% (or £622,000) and our homeowner arrears at 4%.
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2014/15 www.accentgroup.org
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1. Moving to a single contact centre will improve the customer experience.
great place to live your own home… Value for money Running our business efficiently means we can put more money into our services and deliver more homes for those who need them. We want Accent to be a modern, streamlined business that can respond quickly and effectively to the needs of the communities where we work.
Over the next year, our priorities include:
Over the last year, our focus on delivering value for money has included: • Saving £3.9m across the group through better purchasing of goods and services.
• Putting in place new cost-effective regional contracts for our repairs services to save £4m a year across the group.
• Bringing down rent arrears across the group by more than £750,000.
• Saving £500,000 by reletting empty properties quicker.
• Planning the sale of difficult-to-let properties including sheltered housing schemes with the proceeds to be reinvested in new affordable housing.
• Ensuring more customer queries are resolved first time. • Further increasing the use of IT to reduce costs.
• Converting surplus office space into new affordable homes.
• Saving £500,000 by reducing the time properties are left empty before they are re-let.
• Standardising our staff terms and conditions, saving around £50,000.
• Moving to a single customer contact centre to improve the quality and consistency of service when you contact us.
• Making better use of IT, including mobile working for staff and moving more communications with customers online.
Annual Report to Residents Accent South
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2014/15 www.accentgroup.org
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We welcome your views on how we’re doing so please get in touch… 0345 678 0577 camberley@accentgroup.org @accentcmy /accentcmy
1 Pembroke Broadway, Camberley, Surrey, GU15 3XD