Your Homes Newcastle a review of our year, 2015-16 We’ve taken a slightly different approach to our reporting this year and we’re mainly focusing on the things that we know matter most to our customers – we held a consultation where customers could feed in ideas and we’ve also responded to targets we agreed together through our “local offers” programme. If there’s anything you’d like to know about that isn’t covered here please do just let us know – you can find more information and our contact details on our website at www.yhn.org.uk or by calling 0191 278 8600.
The things that matter most to customers Anti-social behaviour
Repairs and maintenance
Complaints
We had a target that we agreed with customers to resolve 93% of anti-social behaviour cases – we’ve beaten that, with 95% of the over 2,000 investigated being resolved. The average number of days taken to resolve a case completely was 45.
This year we completed 103,624 repairs and the average time taken from start to finish for the process was 6.2 days.
This year YHN received 571 complaints, with less than half of those being found to be upheld or partially upheld. Our tenancy services section received the highest number of complaints.
95%
ASB resolved
571 complaints
103,624
45
repairs completed
days to resolve
less than half found to be upheld
Helping customers into work
Rent
How we spent your money
This year we’ve employed 68 customers through our apprenticeship and Your Homes, Your Jobs programmes, with 81% of those trainees progressing into further employment. We also helped tenants to create 41 new businesses through our Make Your Own Money project, with businesses ranging from an Indian takeaway restaurant to an Afro-Caribbean hairdresser and a cupcake maker!
We agreed with our customers that we wanted to collect £113.33m of rent (which is 99.49% of what is due) and we managed to go slightly over this, collecting 99.80%. We also managed not to let the rent loss due to empty properties go over the target we agreed with customers.
There’s more information in the charts below, but the total expenditure for the housing revenue account (where the rent money goes) during 2015-16 was £127.1m. This covered things like staffing and office costs, interest paid on debts and over £50million on improving council properties.
68 customers employed
The Board YHN’s board has an independent chair, Olivia Grant, and six independent members, six tenant members, and six members who represent Newcastle City Council. During 2015-16, the Board met nine times.
41
new businesses
Total expenditure
99.80%
127.1m
rent collected
The financials The total HRA expenditure during 2015-16 was £127.1m. This was broken down as follows: £27.9m YHN staff and offices £19.9m Repair and maintenance of properties £15.8m Interest paid on debts £0.1m Cost of rent accounts in arrears £11.5m Other running costs
www.yhn.org.uk
£51.9m Investing in council properties
The £51.9m spent on investing in the Council’s properties was spent as shown below £24.5m Keeping properties up to standard £9.2m Proactive investment in current housing stock £3.6m Work on communal areas and estates £9.5m Regeneration work £2.6m New build and acquisitions £2.5m Investing in improving services