Residents' Annual Report | 2023

Introduction

Welcome to your Residents’ Annual Report for 2022/23 (1 April 2022 - 31 March 2023). This report provides an overview of how well we are listening to you, how we have handled any complaints you have raised, the quality of your home and any repairs you have needed. As well as telling you some of the steps we have taken to make your home and community a better place to live. I hope that this report is useful. If you have any questions or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. Email improvement@swan.org.uk

Pete Morley-Watts, Executive Director of Customer Experience

Swan manges over 12,000 homes:

7,629 General needs/ affordable

3,648

Shared Ownership

Explore the report

Chevron-Circle-Right Your Voice

Chevron-Circle-Right Your Services

Chevron-Circle-Right Community Development

Chevron-Circle-Right Your Home

Chevron-Circle-Right Care and Support

Your Voice

We want to hear what you think about our services so that we can make improvements.

How we listen to you

You told us that you wanted a variety of ways to share your feedback. There are now a range of informal and formal ways for you to share your views. From text messages and online polls, to paper surveys and focus groups, to being a member of our Help Us Get It Right (HUG) panel or a residents’ group.

You told us in our three yearly customer survey that having more digital engagement opportunities and activities allows you to engage with us in your own time and at home, according to our threeyearly customer survey.

Customer engagement in numbers

1,289

1,289 customers shared their views with us using our engagement channels.

26

7

7 HUG meetings held

59

59 opportunities for you to share your views on topics such as:

• our communal repairs strategy

• our complaints process

• damp and mould

26 resident association meetings held

• how we can support customers better with the rent increase.

How we use your feedback

You also also told us that we could do better at sharing how we use your feedback.

We launched Count Me In, a new online platform we’ve created for you to share your feedback via short surveys and online polls - and read what changes we have made based on what you told us.

We also now send ‘You said, We did’ text messages to customers who give us feedback to tell them how we’ve used this.

Thank you for taking the time to give us feedback!

This year, customer feedback has led to 115 improvements being made to the services that we deliver. You can read more about these improvements in the Your Services section.

Your Services

Overall customer satisfaction with Swan has increased in the last year.

How we use your feedback

Your feedback helps us to improve our services. At the start of 2022, you identified three main areas where we could do thing better.

You told us we need to get better at keeping our promises, such as getting back to you when you contact us.

You said we need to improve how we respond when you complain.

You said that we needed to be better at keeping in touch about repairs appointments.

Keeping our promises

• We tell you how we’ve used your feedback by sending you a ‘You said, We did’ text message.

• We moved our email contact to a system that records how long it takes us to respond to customers and the quality of our response.

• We introduced ‘mystery shoppers’ to give us feedback on how we’re replying to your emails so we can do things better.

• We’ve made improvements to the MySwan customer portal so you can now log, schedule appointments and track repairs.

• We launched our Count Me In online customer feedback hub where you can share your views and let us know what matters to you.

Complaints

We aim to deliver a great service to our customers, but don’t always get it right. When things go wrong, we want to work with you to quickly fix the issue. We have been working hard to improve how we deal with your complaints.

• We’ve rewritten our complaint handling process in line with new guidance from the Ombudsman to make easier for you to raise your concerns.

• We’ve recruited four more customer relations advisors, so that we can respond to you faster.

• We now have, a dedicated complaint handling colleague who looks after complaint cases from start to finish.

• We keep in touch with you more - our customer relations team now call customers at the start, middle and end of the complaints process.

• A director reviews all stage two complaints.

Here’s what we’ve done to improve in these areas that are most important to you.

We have seen an increase in satisfaction with complaints handling. Here’s what you said about how our customer relations team dealt with your complaint:

“Swan was very helpful. Arranged for an earlier date for the final repair and kept me informed”

Essex customer

“Received a good written response which covered all aspects of the complaint”

London customer

“Very pleased with the Customer Relations team. They were really good, absolutely brilliant in fact. The team were on the ball and communication was good throughout the process.”

Essex customer

934 Number of complaints

Satisfaction with the complaints procedure

69% Target: 86%

Satisfaction with outcome of complaint

82% Target: 75%

Stage 1 complaints responded to within six working days

100% Target: 100%

Satisfaction with ASB case handling

90% Target: 80%

Satisfaction with how their report was dealt

71% Target: 75%

Community Development

We’re committed to creating sustainable communities and supporting our customers to achieve their goals.

2022/23 community development overview

Our Community Development team delivers a variety of different projects and activities to help improve your lives and communities.

We’ve given you a flavour of some of the work that they did during 2022/23 below.

175 Qualifications gained

142 People volunteering

4,783 Hot meals provided

20 People securing full-time jobs

£67,907 Amount spent on delivery of Community Development

£55,488

Amount of in-kind support provided to organisations through free lets at community hubs

Employment and training

We scaled-up delivery of our employment and training programmes in 2022/23, helping you to access employment.

We supported 394 customers in their journey to learn or improve their skills through a range of short programmes, targeting employment areas such as security, construction, and education.

Employment and training in numbers

20

20 jobs secured

33

16

16 employment and training projects delivered

33 people progressing to further learning / volunteering

175

394

394 people involved

175 people received a recognised qualigication

Cost-of-living support

We’ve continued to support you with the current cost-of-living increases:

• Published a special cost-of-living edition of HOME magazine, which was delivered to your home.

• Have a dedicated cost-of-living advice page on our website.

• Provided 4,783 children with a free hot meal as part of our holiday activity club provision.

• Provided 572 hours of free childcare support, which enabled working parents to continue to work during school holidays.

• Opened two new food pantries in East London, at our Bow Cross and Blackwall Reach Community Hubs in partnership with Family Action and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Over 285 people have registered to use the weekly service; 180 are Swan residents.

Your Home

We’ve been working hard to improve your repairs service.

We have fed that back to our repairs contractor, Axis, and they have been working hard on improving these areas. They have:

• Piloted an app for Axis operatives to book any follow-on work while they’re at your property, at a time that suits you.

• Started to send text messages to customers with a booked repair so they know when an operative is due to attend.

• Employed more operatives to reduce the time spent you have to wait for a repair.

• Trained Axis call centre handlers to reduce the number of incorrectly assigned jobs.

• Axis has recruited 7 repairs operatives and 3 supervisors.

• Continued to ask our customers for feedback to make sure we’re focusing on the right priorities.

You told us that you were unhappy with how we handle repairs. You were not satisfied with how we managed appointments and felt that we did not keep in touch throughout the process.

Here’s what you said about how our repairs contractor, Axis, handled your repair:

“Operative was fantastic, very clean and tidy and got the job done quickly.

Highly recommended.”

Essex customer

“The gentleman that came was very courteous and polite and also knew his job.”

London customer

“The axis operative was very professional, did a great job of fixing my bathroom ceiling and he cleaned up after himself”

London customer

2022/23 repairs and maintenance overview

30,000+ repairs

163 new kitchens

£126.24 average cost of a repair

163 new boilers

Satisfied with overall service 92% Target: 90%

66% Target: 80%

People satisfied with their last repair 61% Target: 90%

Satisfied with repairs service 100% Target: 100%

Properties with a valid gas safety certificate 56% Target: 65%

Satisfied with how well your home is maintained

12.4 days Target: 15 days

Average number of days taken to re-let an empty home 92% Target: 96%

Repairs completed at first visit 75%

Target: 80%

Repair appointments made and kept 1.76% Target: 2.6%

Satisfaction with our letting service 96% Target: 96.5%

Current arrears as a % of rent due

* Figure is more than 100% as this includes rent areas

Calling back to save you waiting

You can now save time when reporting a repair to Axis by phone. Axis has added a new a call back function.

By selecting this option, you can end the call and carry on with your day knowing that you have kept your place in the queue. You’ll be called back at the same time as you would have got through to a customer service advisor.

To date Axis has called back 100% of customers who have requested a call.

We've upgraded our MySwan portal

You can now log a repairs and book and reschedule repairs appointments at a time that suits you. Find out more and sign up if you haven’t already done so at www.swan.org.uk/MySwan

Sign Up Now

Care and Support

Our care and specialist accommodation services help people to remain living independently.

We have over 1,000 customers living in our Foyers, Extra-care and Specialist Accommodation schemes. We also provide a range of community and in-home support, including care.

Last year (2021/22), we asked you what we could do to improve your services and make you feel more at home. You told us that you wanted more social events and to reconnect with your community.

We listened to what you said and in 2022/23 we delivered 564 activities for customers living in our care and specialist accommodation. These included:

We asked for your feedback on the impact of these activities. Below are the top six benefits you told us these activities provided:

Better connected to the community where you live

We have continued to ask for your feedback. In 2022/23 we held 22 feedback sessions with 148 customers sharing their feedback with us.

87% of the improvements you suggested have been made.

82 service improvements logged during 2022/2023.

71 improvements have already been made. We will try our best to make the other nine next year (2023/24).

These improvements were made across all our Care and Specialist Accommodation services.

Across all our care and specialist accommodation services

For example:

• We agreed a pilot scheme for Foyer customers to keep pets.

• A therapy dog now visits Dobsons House, our extra-care scheme in Rayleigh, Essex weekly.

• We introduced a ‘Meet the managers’ service for Dobsons House, residents to have their say monthly.

• We provided better furniture and white goods in our keyworker living accommodation.

Here’s what one of our customers said about living at Dobsons House, our extracare scheme in Rayleigh, Essex:

“Having lived at Dobsons House since 2016 I can only say that I’m very happy to live here! All staff are always very helpful and will go out of their way to help when needed! All dealt with all the problems which arrived with Covid to the best of their abilities. Thank you very much for all the care you take at all times. I love you all and wish you all the best.”

Here’s what one of our customers said about our keyworker living accommodation in Essex: “Leanne and Trudy were incredibly helpful as they organized excellent accommodation for my arrival in the UK. They supplied all the appropriate information in the welcome pack, such as parking applications and contact numbers for any concerns. The accommodation was lovely as I had an ensuite room which was a very pleasant surprise. Overall, it was a really good experience and being across the road from the Hospital was so very convenient. A special thanks to Leanne who went above and beyond in helping me get settled.”

You can now share your feedback and view how we are using what you tell us to improve your home and services on our Count Me In portal at www.swan.org.uk/CountMeIn

Key Worker Living

Pilgrim House, Billericay, Essex CM12 9XY

0300 303 2500

swan.org.uk | @swanhousing