6 minute read
Neighbourhood Standard
When delivering services to you, we will:
Communication • Be professional, polite and deal with your enquires as soon as we can. • Be consistent, fair and respectful, treating you as an individual, providing you with a fair and equal service and take care of your personal information. • Use plain, jargon-free language. • Provide you with consistent and accurate information. • Answer 90% of all calls to our 0300 number within 20 seconds. • Respond to your letters within 5 working days of receiving them. • Respond to your emails and telephone calls within 2 working days. • Provide you with an out-of-hours number to report emergency repairs and antisocial behaviour. • Communicate with you in a way that best suits your needs. • Publish an Annual Residents’ Report to tell you how we are performing. • Carry out regular customer satisfaction surveys and publish the results.
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Complaints and compliments • Make it easy for you to tell us when something has gone wrong and when we have done a good job. • Acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days. • Resolve 90% of complaints within 6 working days. • Keep you informed if we cannot give you a full response in 6 working days. • Apologise when we have got it wrong. • Let you know how we have learnt from your complaints. • Publish information on the complaints we have received and our performance against our targets for complaints.
Equality and diversity • Deliver our services in a way that does not discriminate against anyone on the basis of sex, age, race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, or pregnancy and maternity. • Make our offices accessible to all our customers. • Treat everyone fairly based on their needs. • Be sensitive about religious or cultural dates when visiting your home.
Resident involvement • Offer different levels of involvement so you can influence our services, policies and strategies depending on what you are interested in and how much time you have to spare. • Support resident associations or groups in existing communities and regeneration projects through practical and/or financial help. • Work with you to enable you to scrutinise our performance and get involved in service reviews. • Work with you to develop local offers for service delivery in your area. • Make it easy for you to understand the impact that your involvement has had upon services.
When delivering services to you, we will:
Lettable standard • Ensure your new home is safe and secure, clean and in a good state of repair. • Provide you with a contribution towards decorating if we have assessed your new home as being in a poor decorative order. • Aim to relet our empty homes within 15 working days.
Repairs and maintenance • Make available to you a copy of our Repair Standards, which sets out tenant and landlord responsibility. • Carry out your repairs in the following timescales: - Immediate – 4 hours. - Emergency – 24 hours. - Standard – 15 working days. - Planned – 45 days. • Provide a range of ways for you to report a repair. • Provide you with an appointment time and compensate you if we do not attend at the agreed time. • Aim to complete your repair ‘right first time’.
• Keep you informed about any delays to your repair. • Aim to decorate the outside of your home every 7 years. • Provide you with a choice when carrying out planned improvements to your home.
Improvements and adaptations • Consider your request for permission to carry out an improvement to your home within 15 working days, if we refuse permission we will provide you with a full explanation why this is. • Pay you compensation if you move on and the improvement you carried out meets the qualifying criteria. • Carry out minor adaptations to your home if you need them. • Help you to arrange major adaptations if you need them.
Health and safety • Check shared areas regularly to ensure they meet health & safety standards. • Remove and dispose of any items left in shared areas and take appropriate enforcement. • Offer you a range of appointments to carry out your annual Gas Safety check. • Service and maintain any equipment we have installed in accordance with legal requirements and good practice. • Ensure your home exceeds the Government’s Decent Homes Guidance. • Ask you to identify if you have any specific requirements before we commence works to your home.
When delivering services to you, we will:
Your tenancy • Offer you the most secure tenancy we can based on your circumstances and our Tenancy Policy. • Explain your rights and responsibilities before you sign your tenancy. • Make sure any service charges you pay reflect the cost of providing the services you receive.
Managing your tenancy • Help you to understand your responsibilities as a tenant and to access the services you need. • Let you know who you need to contact. • Consider any request from you to change your tenancy within 10 working days of receiving it.
Allocating homes • Let our homes in a fair, transparent and efficient way. • Take into account your housing needs when assessing your transfer application. • Offer you financial support if you want to move into a smaller home. • Provide you with an online transfer and mutual exchange service which is free to access. • Assess your transfer application within 5 working days of it being submitted. • Make sure you have a chance to view any home offered to you and give you information to help you decide if it is the right home for you. • Consider any appeal against decisions about your transfer application or offer of a home within 10 working days.
Paying your rent • Offer you a number of convenient ways for paying your rent and other charges. • Give you a minimum of four weeks’ notice of any changes to the charges you pay. • Assist you to maximise your income. • Make early contact with you if you fall into arrears and be clear about the action we will take if they are not repaid. • Assist you to claim benefits and provide advice on debt management. • Provide you with regular rent statements.
When delivering services to you, we will:
Estate services • Remove racist, sexist, homophobic or similarly offensive graffiti within one working day and other graffiti within 5 working days of receiving your report. • Provide a regular cleaning service for inside and outside shared areas. • Aim to recycle 100% of our green waste.
Communal areas • Maintain communal gardens and planting areas to a good standard. • Invite you to monitor the standards of cleanliness with us through estate inspections. • Remove items that have been dumped and take action against those identified as responsible.
Anti-social behaviour • Take all your reports of anti-social behaviour seriously. • Arrange an appointment within 5 working days from receiving your report or 24 hours if serious. • Make sure those involved or affected by anti-social behaviour receive appropriate support and advice. • Work with other agencies to resolve cases of domestic abuse and hate crime. • Work with other agencies to prevent and tackle anti-social behaviour in your neighbourhood. • Make sure we use all the tools and legal powers that are available to us.
Community engagement • Work together with you and other partners including your local authority to make your neighbourhood a great place to live. • Help arrange estate based activities for local residents. • Support you to get involved in your community. • Support you to build your capacity and meet your goals.
