SYHA Annual Report to Customers 2016
SYHA
Annual Report to Customers 2016
SYHA
welcomes you
This is our first online Annual Report to Customers and it gives you an update on our performance in April 2015 to March 2016.
Wosborough, Barnsley
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Annual Report to Customers 2016
Why is it important that we share this information with you? Well, we’ve outlined how we’re providing value for money and good quality services.
know more. And there are opportunities for you to tell us what you think – we’d love to hear from you.
We’ve described what we’ve been up to, and what we’ve achieved. Over the past year we’ve seen lots of changes. We now have a new Prime Minister, we’ve begun the process of leaving the European Union (Brexit), and welfare reforms have been introduced that have hit some of our customers. One thing that hasn’t changed is our commitment to providing quality housing and support services. This report gives an overview of our activities, our performance and how we’ve improved value for money. Where we’re not doing as well as we’d like, we’ve explained why, and what we’re going to do to improve. There are links to more detailed information for those of you who want to
Tony Stacey Chief Executive
If you’d like to see more detail about value for money why not head over to www.syha.co.uk to read our Value for Money statement in full.
Annual Report to Customers 2016
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A place you’re proud to call home
Dyche Drive, Sheffield.
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Annual Report to Customers 2016
Your tenancy Many of you will have seen a reduction in your rent as a result of a Government decision on rent setting. If your rent has reduced, the good news is that this will carry on for a further three years. Whilst this is a welcome boost to your finances, it reduces the income we receive in rent and can spend on services, meaning we need to make savings.
Did you know? – On average our rents are 21% lower than private rented properties in our areas. We expect customers to pay their rent on time. This makes sure your tenancy is secure and keeps down our costs on chasing rent arrears. Last year we spent the equivalent of £123 per property chasing arrears and with your help we want to reduce that figure next year.
Your rent Paying rent by Direct Debit is the easiest way to keep your rent up to date - it’s also the lowest cost for us. More and more of our customers are paying their rent this way, and it’s really easy to set up. All you have to do is fill in one simple form or contact our Customer Service team and we’ll take care of the rest.
If you do struggle to pay your rent, let us know immediately so we can work with you. We know that cuts to benefits have made it harder for some people, which is why we support customers to get any payments they are entitled to.
Where does my rent go? Your rent covers the obvious things like repairs and improvements, but it also covers a whole range of other services.
housing benefit and other payments totalling £31, 919.
For example, you have access to a dedicated member of staff who can help with things like anti-social behaviour and getting involved in community activities.
Did you know? – Managing
Last year we provided expert benefits advice and support to 365 customers, resulting in them receiving unclaimed
anti-social behaviour cost us £193,000 last year and we are pleased that 89% of customers are happy with that service.
Annual Report to Customers 2016
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A place you’re proud to call home
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Annual Report to Customers 2016
Your home Feeling secure in your home means you can focus on living your life and the things that are most important to you. All of our homes are maintained to meet and exceed the Government’s Decent Homes Standard. But we want to provide much more than a decent home, we want to provide good services that are value for money. The rent reductions over the next four
years mean we have less to spend, and we have had to be innovative in thinking about how to maintain our services while reducing costs. We are investing more in major improvements to our properties. Over the past 12 months we’ve spent £99.58 more per property on making major improvements like new kitchens and bathrooms. Over time this will bring savings on day-to-day repairs.
Get it right first time Customers want repairs completed right in one visit – it’s more convenient for you, and it’s cheaper for us. Our Home Maintenance Team completed 89% of repairs first time last year, better than other similar sized landlords who average 87%. Although we’ve made huge steps in achieving better value for money on repairs, the time taken to complete a repair rose from an average of 6.2 days to 10.1 days. One of the reasons for this was that one of our contractors left us mid-year and we had to pick up the
slack at fairly short notice. However, we managed to maintain our performance on emergency repairs with over 96% being carried out within 24 hours. Our eye is firmly on the ball when it comes to health and safety. We service all of your gas boilers every year and we are delighted that at the end of March 2016 we had no overdue gas services. Thank you to the 3,198 of you who kept to your appointment so we could do the service on the first visit. This helps keep your homes safe, and also saves us money on repeat visits.
Growing our Home Maintenance Team Have you noticed a few more SYHA vans on the roads recently? Well, that’s because we’re growing our Home Maintenance Team (HMT) and bringing more jobs in-house, which has led to great savings on VAT. We’re delighted with the results from
the expansion so far, and we’re planning to grow our HMT even more over the next three years. They are already taking on more day-today repairs and in 2017 they will move onto working on empty properties and installing new kitchens.
Annual Report to Customers 2016
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Your
community
When we wake up and open the curtains, we want to be proud of the neighbourhood we live in. We want to feel like we live in a place where we can get involved in activities, where we feel safe, the street is clean, and there are a range of opportunities. That’s when a neighbourhood truly becomes a community.
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Annual Report to Customers 2016
Local opportunities Work and training Customers in Auckley now have support to find work and training opportunities as we set up the Auckley Job Club. Making use of social media has led to one-to-one sessions with 21 customers at the estate’s community house and 11 of them are now in employment or training.
Working with young people You wanted more activities for children. Working alongside the Sheffield Sharks, Sheffield Eagles and Sheffield Tigers, we now run basketball and rugby classes for over 1,100 young people.
Working with us to care for the environment We work with our customers to help keep neighbourhoods looking their best. This ranges from customers planting and maintaining communal flower beds at a scheme in Greasbrough, to the Maltby Environmentalists who have had a year to remember. The started out as a group of children helping to keep their street tidy, and
this small group has rapidly grown into a neighbourhood-wide project.The team’s efforts were recognised with a nomination at the annual Voluntary Action Rotherham awards. And to top the year off, they became the first group ever to win the Young Persons of the Year award at the Maltby Town Council Awards.
Coming together We know strong communities are built not by us, but by the people who live there and the connections they make. Customers on Priestley Close in Doncaster told us they wanted to get to know their neighbours a little better and asked if we would work with them to organise events to do this.
At Christmas we helped organise a mince pie and mulled wine event, followed later by an afternoon tea. The group now have their own Facebook page where they can keep up to date with their neighbours, and are already planning more events.
Annual Report to Customers 2016
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Getting in touch and getting
involved
We’ve improved the number of different ways you can get in touch with us. Lots of you chose the more traditional route by giving us a call, and our Customer Services Team received 42,289 calls in just 12 months.
There has been a huge increase in the number of customers contacting us via social media. Over the past year the number of likes on our Facebook page rose from 505 to 1,030 – and it’s growing every day. We’ve been trying out different ways we can use social media to share news, engage with more of our customers and have online conversations. Over the past 12 months there have been lots of different opportunities to
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Annual Report to Customers 2016
get involved or let us know what you think about the work we do. Last year we set a goal of 5,000 hours of volunteering from our staff and customers. Thanks to your amazing efforts we smashed that goal, reaching 6,302 hours by the end of the year. We estimate that the time you gave is worth nearly £80,000 – so we’d like to say a massive thank you to each and every one of our volunteers.
Did you know? – The average time it took our Customer Services Team to answer a call was 14 seconds.
Having your say The Customer Challenge Group continues to provide feedback and make recommendations on how we can improve. Over the past year the group has made improvement recommendations for our approach to supporting customers experiencing anti-social behaviour and how we handle compensation requests.
Our Customer Improvement Panel has also been busy over the past 12 months. The panel have given us their views on subjects including customer promises, repairs and how we can best publicise some of our services. If you’d like to share your views on our services, why not get in touch today?
Complaints Overall we received a total of 295 complaints in 2015-16, almost the same as in 2014-15 when we had 296.
our customers. We replied to 96% of complaints within two weeks and to 46% within a week.
Of the complaints 63% related to the repairs service. This is usual for a housing association because repairs account for most transactions with
75% of customers who complained said they were satisďŹ ed with the way we handled their complaint.
Annual Report to Customers 2016
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Building
new homes
Housing Associations play a vital role in building the new homes the country desperately needs. We’re a relatively small organisation, but we’ve got ambitious plans to expand our development programme and build new homes.
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Annual Report to Customers 2016
Over the past year we’ve built or acquired 152 new homes for rent or shared ownership. This is twice the national average in % terms, and more than three times the number of homes we built in the previous financial year.
We’re well placed to continue expanding our building and acquisition programme, and over the next five years we’ve already secured 371 new homes, and we’ve got plans for a further 809. The price of renting in our region is much lower than the national average, which is great for keeping our customers’ rent as low as possible. But, it does mean that the income we get from rent is lower too, and when we
come to building new homes our build costs are similar to anywhere else in the country. This means that we’re increasingly looking at innovative ways to build high quality, new homes, cheaper. There are lots of exciting options that we’re exploring, but we’re still in the very early stages.
We’ve got plans to build 1,180 new homes over the next five years.
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The way we
live well
Through our LiveWell services we provide excellent care and supported housing to 2,743 customers. That’s up from 1,872 in 2013, and the number continues to grow. This year we’ve launched four new services:
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Annual Report to Customers 2016
• Take Notice and Connect 3 provide specialist mental health support across Sheffield. • The Barnsley Dementia Support Service has already worked with hundreds of people in Barnsley. • Newsome Vale, our new development in Wombwell, Barnsley is now home to 34 older people.
Making a real difference LiveWell are helping to save local health and social care services millions of pounds every year. Take a look at some of the savings we’ve made locally over the past year: • Our extra care schemes are home to 396 older people. By enabling them to stay in their home, and out of hospital, the schemes provide a saving of £2,151,600 to local health and social care services every year. • We provide specialist mental health support to 299 people, which prevents admission to NHS services that would otherwise cost £28,080 per person, per year. That’s an annual saving of £8,395,920.
• Our LivingWell partnership with Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust saw us work with 24 people last year. The support we provided reduced the time they spent receiving specialist mental health support by 97%, saving £1 million over the year. • The Doncaster Social Prescribing Service worked with 985 people last year, saving health and social care services in Doncaster an estimated £372,330 over the year. We’re continually looking at how we can help provide services that save money and meet local needs. The next section highlights some examples of the work we are already doing in our region.
Annual Report to Customers 2016
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Other projects we are
working on
We’re always looking for new ways to support people on more than just housing. Here are some examples of new services where we work alongside people and help them reach their potential. These services provide a cheaper alternative to more costly health interventions. Building Better Opportunities Thanks to funding from the Big Lottery and the European Social Fund, Building Better Opportunities will provide employment support to people across our region. The two year project was launched in August 2016 and works with people with mental health problems, learning disabilities and other complex needs.
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Annual Report to Customers 2016
By working alongside the major employers in the region, the project aims to enable those who are furthest away from employment to take their first steps towards work. Co:Create We believe that to make services like A&E and care homes the best they can be, we need to draw on the ideas and experience of those that use them, alongside innovative approaches to creative design and thinking. And that’s where our Co:Create team comes in. We’ve secured three years of funding from the Department of Health to help co-design, co-deliver and co-evaluate public health strategies and services across the country. Launched in June 2016 we’ve already seen our first NHS organisations working alongside the Co:Create team.
Moments of Joy We want to see our customers flourish, and that means more than just survival. Happiness, growth and learning are just as important as a roof over their heads. Thanks to funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, we are rolling out our latest round of Moments of Joy projects. If you’re interested in working with professionals in arts, dance or music, and you live in Doncaster or Sheffield, why not give it a go? Age Better in Sheffield Now into its second year, the Age Better in Sheffield programme continues to go from strength to strength. In just 12 months, 756 people have been supported through the project.
organisations, including Good Gym, Living Streets and Sheffield Mencap. There are lots of opportunities for anyone to get involved, so why not get in touch. Over2You Another project into its second year is Over2You. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the 40 volunteers on the project, who’ve given 831 hours between them, they’ve carried out 72 audits of local health and social care services over the past 12 months to see how these services can be improved. If you’ve recently visited a hospital or your GP and thought your experience could have been better, get in touch?
As part of our Innovation Fund we’ve recently welcomed five new
Annual Report to Customers 2016
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Our finances
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We are working hard to make sure we provide the best possible value for money.
doing things in a more cost effective way and ensuring we collect the rent we’re owed.
Value for money is about ensuring our services run as efficiently, and as effectively, as possible. That means we’re cutting out unnecessary costs,
By doing this we can reinvest money back into developing new homes and delivering the services that are important to you.
Annual Report to Customers 2016
Fitzwilliam Walk, Greasbrough, Rotherham.
If you’d like to find out more take a look at our Value for Money Statement or our Financial Statements.
A big saving was made in the past year by making improvements to our IT systems, as the investment helped reduce costs by £172,000.
By re-negotiating procurement contracts we have saved £98,000 on insurances, £25,000 on telecommunications, and £22,300 a year on buying flooring.
The in-sourcing of repairs work to our Home Maintenance Team will help save £519,000 per year, going forward.
Sustainability Our work on sustainability is a huge part of our value for money agenda, as well as doing our bit for the environment. Examples of the work we have done include; recovering £85,000 in unclaimed Government payments from the solar panels on our homes, saving £11,000 a year in fuel costs through
our new electric vehicles and eco driving initiatives, and an estimated £15,260 savings and income through our latest series of solar panel installations. We have saved £17,325 by replacing our old quarterly newsletter with online communications.
Other savings • We’re now saving £30,000 a year on gas and electricity.
• Staff costs in our rent team have been reduced by £30,000 a year.
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Looking forward
Throughout this review we’ve given you a look back at how we’ve performed over the past 12 months. But what does the year ahead look like?
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Annual Report to Customers 2016
One big challenge for 2016-2017 is the continued impact of welfare reform on our customers. • Some families claiming housing benefit will be hit by the revised benefit cap so, before these changes happen, we will be working with these families to try and help them cope with the change. • More of our customers will be moving on to Universal Credit. This changes the way people need to claim, manage their money and budget. Currently we only have 30 customers on Universal Credit but as this number builds we will need
to provide more support to protect our income and help customers adapt to this change.
• The proposed Local Housing Allowance cap threatens to hit the housing benefit of customers who live in our supported housing schemes. So, we’ll be continuing to do our best to convince the Government to exempt supported housing tenants from these changes.
Another area we’ll be focusing on is continuing to reduce our costs so we can carry on providing good services, despite reduced rents. One way we plan on doing this is to bring even more of our repairs work in-house, so expect to see more of our HMT staff knocking on your door.
legislation and the formation of many housing associations, including SYHA. Watch out for the Homes for Cathy campaign!
Later on this year we’ll be marking the 50th anniversary of the film Cathy Come Home. The release of the film in 1966 inspired the first homelessness
Once the national pilot has ended we’ll also be beginning work on our Right to Buy offer, and we’ll publicise this once it’s available.
Over the next 12 months we will be starting work on building at least 48 new homes, with more likely to follow.
A final thought Your feedback and involvement is important so that we can continue to provide quality services. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you can offer, we want to hear from you.
Thank you for taking the time to read this review.
Tony Stacey Chief Executive
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Get in touch There are lots of different ways you can contact us. So, whatever way suits you best, why not get in touch? And it can be anything you want to talk about. Whether you’ve had a great experience with a member of staff, you’re pleased with some work carried out at your home, or you think we could have done better, just let us know. You can get in touch with us Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm using the following methods: • • • • • • •
Call us on 0114 2900 200 Text us on 85500 Email us at enquiries@syha.co.uk Like our Facebook page www.facebook.com/SouthYorksHA Follow us on Twitter @SYorksHA Visit our website www.syha.co.uk Or visit us at our head office on Wellington Street, Sheffield, S1 4HF
If you need to contact us outside of these hours just leave us a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.