Our Promise Report 2021-22

Make sure we are well run and financially sustainable so we can continue to tackle poverty.

Make sure your home is safe, secure and well-maintained.

Make sure your home is affordable and support you with income and welfare advice.

Support you to live well in your home, so that you can live the life you choose in a safe and connected community.

Spend money wisely and tell you how we spend it so that you can hold us to account.

Make sure your voice is heard, listen to your feedback, and deal with complaints quickly and fairly.

Making sure service charges are fair and provide value for money.

Provide excellent service and let you know how we are performing on essential maintenance, repairs and safety.

Our Promise is our residents’ charter.

We worked with the #InfluenceUs volunteers and our Resident Committee to create ‘Our Promise’ which sets out what our residents should expect from ClwydAlyn.

We use Our Promise to measure our performance, drive service improvements and it makes us accountable to residents in an open and honest way.

We believe that home matters and a home should be more than just four walls and a roof. Our Promise sets out our commitment to deliver excellent services.

Make sure your home is safe, secure, and well-maintained.

99.9% of homes gas safety checked

99.9% of homes with a gas appliance have an in-date, accredited gas safety check.

100% of buildings fire risk compliant

100% of buildings have an in-date and compliant Fire Risk Assessment.

100% of homes meet the WHQ standard

100% of homes meet the Welsh Housing Quality (WHQ) Standard.

90% of residents are satisfied that their home is safe and secure

85% of residents satisfied

85% of our residents are satisfied with the quality of their home.

£3.5 Million

Spent on improving existing homes.

£5.7 Million

929 Existing homes Improved

£1.5 Million Spent on making homes safe.

£ £ £ £

Spent on repairs and maintaining homes.

142 A-rated gas boilers installed

136 Bathrooms upgraded 227 Kitchens upgraded

74 Water heating systems upgarded

24,810 Compliance safety certificates and home safety checks completed

Investing in existing homes

£3.5 Million

Spent on energy improvements to 929 homes

566 Residents saving up to £81.01 per year from energy improvements

279 tonnes Carbon Reduction per year by improving Home Efficiency

200 Homes with new windows and doors

150 Electric heating systems upgraded

270 Homes adapted to suit our residents needs.

Equivalent to 11,000 trees annual carbon intake

89% of residents are satisfied that their rent provides value for money.

Make sure your home is affordable and support you with income and welfare advice.

2021/22

Our affordable rent policy takes into consideration our resident’s views, circumstances, and income.

Creating a benchmark for all rents based on Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Living rent model. This enables us to implement rent increases based on affordability. In our general needs and sheltered homes, we applied a rent increase based on only the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and froze rents for nearly 500 residents.

We work across 6 Local Authority areas for the homes under the rent regulation regime.

Local Housing Allowance based on rents for 2021/22:

11.14%

On average our rent is 11.14% cheaper than the Local Housing Allowance.

£ £ £ £

Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates are used to calculate the amount of housing benefit (or the housing

element of

Universal Credit)

that can be paid to tenants in the private rented sector.

It is based on private market rents being paid by tenants in the broad rental market area and is limited by legislation.

We provide security to our residents, so they know they have a place to live.

100% of our general needs and sheltered homes have an assured tenancy.

2,163 Home visits completed by our housing officers

179

People welcomed into our supported living and homeless services

659

New residents welcomed

Helped 632 people gain

£858,360.62

In additional income through our welfare rights team

485 People supported

by our early intervention officers supporting first tenancies, missed payments and low-level arrears.

Our supported living schemes and services are designed to meet the needs of people who need additional support, such as people with mental health issues, addiction issues, people at risk of domestic violence or teenage parents.

“ I had no electric or gas on my meters and no food and we were going into a Bank holiday weekend with services closing down. Gafyn called Groundworks to see if a referral could be fast-tracked. They took the referral and processed it straight away. I was awarded £42 on both of my meters. Gafyn also managed to get me a food parcel as I was isolating with covid, so he arranged a delivery. I’m extremely grateful for his help as I was so hungry and was worried how I was going to manage over the weekend. Thank you.”

75% of residents are satisfied that their service charges provide value for money

We have been working with residents on value for money and what really matters to them. In response to resident feedback, we have made changes like reducing the frequency of the grounds maintenance service to reduce service charges.

Our management charge covers the administrative or management costs associated with delivering your services.

It covers things like the cost of procuring and managing contracts, housing and resident liaison and support, as well as the cost of administering invoices related to your home or communal areas. The rest of your service charge covers the actual cost of each service itself.

A resident wrote in to thank Gafyn Thomas, Housing Officer.

Making sure service charges are fair and provide value for money.

We are undertaking a full review of service charges and working with residents on what services they need or want and how these are delivered.

Provide excellent services and let you know how we are performing on essential maintenance, repairs and safety.

85% 85% of residents were happy with the overall service provided

21,474 Routine day-to-day repair jobs received

89% of jobs were completed on the first visit.

90% 90% of residents were satisfied with their new home

20,420 Routine day-to-day repair jobs completed

76% of residents were satisfied with the way ClwydAlyn deals with repairs and maintenance

4,952 emergency repairs completed in 24 hours

537 empty homes renovated

48 days was the average time to relet a home

We usually have between 1,000 & 1,500 open jobs on the system which is about 2½ to 3½ weeks of work. It helps us to plan ahead and balance the priority of different jobs with the right level of staff.

Our Contact Centre completed 2384 maintenance satisfaction calls last year following routine maintenance works and overall satisfaction was 89%.

59,227 calls received

90% of calls were answered… that’s

53,107

WHY DON’T WE ANSWER EVERY CALL?

While people are waiting, we remind them that they can use the residents’ portal instead of waiting. There are lots of reasons that people may hang up before we answer.

Every now and then some things affect our service times that are outside of our control.

Storm Arwen saw a huge increase in the number of customer contacts we received in November 2021. It also created a big increase in the number of jobs for our maintenance teams. We’ve also put more focus on our right first-time approach, which means we spend a little longer with customers at the start. This has lengthened our waiting times for some calls to be answered.

A resident wrote in to thank James Twisse, Electrician:

2.12 minutes was the average waiting time for calls to be answered

55% were within 40 seconds!

1,645 People registered for MyClwydAlyn our Residents’ Portal

750 People are using it each month… It’s the most popular way to pay rent!

“ During a maintenance visit from James, I asked him for a crash course in using my heaters. Since then, I’ve got them on for the minimum that suits me, which is plenty, so now my bills should really drop. James was excellent.”

A resident wrote in to thank Christopher Smales and Alexander Hall from the plumbing and heating team:

“The two people who attended are my ‘knights in shining armour’. They were very quick, very polite and were both delightful people. I’m eternally grateful to have my upstairs toilet back.”

In the last 12 months:

193 Concerns were raised through our complaints process

128 Were resolved immediately 53 Were resolved at stage 1 12 Were resolved at stage 2 7 Were considered by the Ombudsman

ZERO Complaints were upheld by the Ombudsman

82% of residents said they trust ClwydAlyn

68% of residents are satisfied with the opportunities given to participate in our decision-making processes

75% of residents are satisfied that we listen to your views and act upon them

We responded to 85% of stage 1 and 2 complaints within our stated timescale

24% were neither satisfied or disatisfied with the opportunities given to participate in our decision making

We responded to

100% of first contact complaints within our 5-day timescale

Make sure your voice is heard, listen to your feedback, and deal with complaints quickly and fairly.

107 residents

are part of our #InfluenceUs group and have taken part in 5 service reviews to help shape our services.

Including grounds maintenance, chargeable costs policy, DIY repairs service, complaints panel and residents’ portal.

#InfluenceUs was awarded 2nd place in Making Online EngagementTenant Work at the TPAS Good Practice Awards 2021.

GWOBRAU ARFER DA TPAS CYMRU 2021

Cydnabod cyflawniadau a rhannu arfer da

TPAS CYMRU GOOD PRACTICE AWARDS 2021 Recognising achievements & sharing good practice

TYSTYSGRIF CYDNABYDDIAETH / CERTIFICATE OF RECOGNITION

Complaints Panel ClwydAlyn

ENNILLYDD y Wobr Cynnwys Tenantiaid wrth Lunio Gwasanaethau WINNER of the Involving Tenants in Shaping Services Award

Our Complaints panel won the Involving Tenants in Shaping Services at the TPAS Good Practice Awards 2021.

2021/22

How all the income we collected last year was spent

Management Costs £6.4 million

Service Costs £18.7 million Day to Day Maintenance £7 million

Management costs

Cover all ClwydAlyn’s overheads (costs), including things like finance, IT, communications, governance, housing staff and the business costs associated with running the organisation.

Service Costs

Cover the cost of providing services at our homes such as cleaning, window cleaning, gardening, utilities, and council tax. It also covers the maintenance and replacement of communal equipment such as door entry systems, gates, lifts, TV aerials, laundry equipment, as well as the refurbishment of communal areas. It also includes staff costs such as cleaners, catering staff, nurses, care practitioners and project workers who work in our homeless and supported living services.

Day to day repairs

Is the cost of our responsive repairs (fixing things when they break).

Major Improvements £6.5 million

Mortgage Repayments £7.2 million

Void and Bad Debts £1.9m

Major improvements

Is the cost of long-term improvements to our homes such as rewiring, electrical heating systems, energy efficiency measures and the replacement of things like kitchens, bathrooms, boilers, roofs, windows and doors.

Mortgage repayments

Is the interest we pay on the borrowing that we have used to build and acquire homes.

Voids (empty homes)

We always have some homes that are empty, we call them voids. This can be for lots of reasons, like the amount of work needed to make them into a good quality home for the next residents. We want people to move into our empty homes quickly, so we work with partners to find someone looking for a home, prepare their tenancy and make sure the home is ready and safe for them to move into as quickly as possible.

We renovated 537 empty properties last year and welcomed 659 new residents.

On average it took 48 days to relet a home.

Unfortunately, we lose some money from empty homes because we can’t collect any rent while the home is empty.

Our target is to have 30 empty homes or less each month. At the start of 2022 it was over 50, and as a result our void loss in 21/22 was 2.13%, which is higher than our target of 1.10%.

Some of this is because after Covid there was an increase in the number of homes becoming empty, due to people’s circumstances changing.

Bad debt?

Bad debt is the amount of rent and service charges that are owed to us, but we have been unable to collect. This amount was £376k during 21/22. Rent collected for the year was 97.15% against our target of 97%

owed to us during 21/22

£376k

Spend money wisely and tell you how we spend it so that you can hold us to account.

Number of homes by category:

We built 66 new homes

90%

90% of residents were satisfied with their new home

At one of our new developments (Glasdir) as part of our social value work, we’ve:

Created a trainee engineer post: Currently on their 2nd year of training and will qualify fully next year, living only 300m from the site.

Ensured that 60% of the sub-contractor workforce is local (within a 20-mile radius) 25% within 15 Miles and 15% within 35 miles.

Ensured all directly employed labour is local to the site (within 20-mile radius).

We’ve been awarded £473K from the Energy Redress grant scheme to provide energy support to 3000 households and roll out energy training to 300 frontline staff.

Together we will:

 Make it easy for people to access energy advice through a one stop referral process

 Provide support for applying for discounts, setting up payment options and accessing grants

 Support people to deal with energy providers to get the best tariff, switch tariffs and deal with complaints

Usually, we get 58% of the money to build new homes through grant funding, and we borrow 42% of the cost of the build. We then use some of the rent from the new house to pay off the loan over a long period just like a mortgage.

Over the year we spent £17,307 on new flooring for 23 residents.

Following the success of the pilot we’ve now committed to providing downstairs flooring in all new developments.

 Maximise income through benefit checks and signposting

 Provide emergency food, gas, and electricity support

 Utilise social prescribing and wellbeing support to improve people’s health outcomes

38%

Key achievements:

Established

a Welcome Centre for 80 Ukrainian refugees, in partnership with Gwynedd County Council. We were proud to lead North Wales’s response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

Established

a new homeless service in partnership with Conwy Council. The Bell supports 6 young homeless people

Developed

our Women’s Aid service in Flintshire by establishing a brand-new crisis house for women in need. As well as extending the bathrooms in our existing service to accommodate mothers and their children.

Established an ICAN Hub

in partnership with the Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board Located in Rhyl it supports people suffering with their mental health. So far, the hub has supported over 500 people with over 1,600 interventions

Developed

a new parent and baby service in Wrexham to support single parents.

In partnership with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board & Gwynedd County Council we have established a hospital step-down service for 12 patients that don’t need to be in hospital but aren’t quite ready to go home, based at our Penrhos Extra Care

In partnership with Shelter Cymru, we’ve established a new early intervention service aimed at preventing homelessness in Denbighshire.

We also helped: 75 of our supported living residents to move into a permanent home

38 of our supported living residents to attend a course or take an apprenticeship

31 of our supported living residents to sign up to college and university courses

67 Children across our schemes

39 of our supported living residents to enter fulltime employment We have offered 9 Work experience placements and attended 7 schools across North Wales to support interview workshops or career fairs.

12 Babies were born while living with us

A big thank you from one of the Ukrainian refugees

Our employability strategy aims to deliver the best services for our residents through building our future workforce. We want to create inclusive communities and opportunities for residents through employability, and champion the housing sector as a great career. To achieve this we are working with key partners who have helped us to:

Support 6 young people with learning disabilities through Project Search and since then 5 of those have successfully secured paid employment.

Our approach to social value

Our approach to social value

Support 6 young women to join the We Mind The Gap Programme, which provides paid employment and life coaching for one year. 3 have gained employment following the programme.

Work with Creating Enterprise to offer 4 Kickstart placements and support 3 people into paid employment.

Our Corporate mission is to beat poverty and our social value framework focuses on 4 main themes:

Our Mission

Our

Providing value for money is key to what we do. We want to make sure that every pound is spent as effectively as possible so we can have a bigger impact on our communities. Our new social value strategy takes a proactive approach to ensuring social value is embedded in our procurement process for buying goods and services.

Social Value Scope

Activities and services that go above and beyond to deliver social value outcomes that contribute to our povery priorities and mission to beat poverty.

ClwydAlyn is regulated by the Welsh Government and is required to submit an annual Self-Evaluation to demonstrate how we comply with each of the performance standards set out in the Regulatory Framework.

During the year, Welsh Government introduced a new framework for regulation with revised scoring and categories. ClwydAlyn was one of the first to be asked to go through the new framework and we were ranked as ‘Green’ for both financial management and governance - the highest assurance possible.

ClwydAlyn is incorporated as a Charitable Community Benefit Society under the CoOperative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 and is a Not for Profit.

Operating margin (money left over)

Despite disruption from Covid, our operating margin for 2021/22 was just over 20%. Money left over is a good thing... because we use this to finance, adapt and do work on more homes for more people. It also makes our lenders more confident in us and allows us to borrow money at a lower interest rate. ��

The association meets the regulatory standards and will receive routine regulatory oversight.

We are a member of Community Housing Cymru (CHC), and we follow their Code of Governance

We also:

Retained ‘A Stable’ credit rating with Standard and Poor’s (this is good)

Retained A3 rating from Moody’s (this is an unsolicited rating) (this is also good)

Drew down £10 million from deferred sale of our corporate bond

Agreed a further deferred drawdown of the bond with £20m due in May 2023 and £20m in November 2023. New homes are built using a mixture of borrowing and government grant funding.

Make sure we are well run and financially sustainable so we can continue to tackle poverty.

GREEN GREEN

All regulatory assessments have been positive in the last 12 months.