Report to Residents 2012

Residents’ Report2011—12

02 Report to Residents: introduction

East Thames continues to put services to residents at the heart of what we do. We have spent the last year focussing on improving our services to our residents while making ourselves more efficient and cost effective. This is to ensure we can keep our costs down while improving services at a time when government is making less money available to support people on low incomes and to build new homes.

This report is all about performance and sharing with our residents how well we’re doing as a landlord and how we compare with other social landlords. Within these pages you’ll see how we’ve done, both where we’re doing well and the areas where we need to improve. There are certainly areas where we want to do better, such as your experience of our complaints process, and we’ve included some information about what we’re doing to make these improvements.

We have also continued to invest in our homes and 99.9% of homes meet the decent homes standard. We’ve spent more than £2m on communal improvements such as painting and installing digital television systems. We’ve also inspected everyone’s gas appliances in the last year and carried out extra fire assessments to make sure your homes are as safe as possible.

One of the big success stories for the year has been keeping rent arrears low. We know that household finances are tight for many of our residents and we’ve been

offering free debt and welfare advice to help our residents avoid getting into debt. We’ve also helped residents set up a suitable bank account and we’ve helped lots of residents find jobs. We offer a range of support for people to find work and in the past year we’ve helped more than 200 people find a job.

We know that household finances are likely to remain tight over the coming year as more welfare changes are implemented, and we will continue to offer a range of support for residents.

Over the past year we have really started to put the wheels in motion to improve our approach to resident involvement. The good news is we now have a team of 11 Housing Scrutiny Panel members who have been elected by their fellow residents. They are working to independently assess our performance and identify areas for improvement. So far they have focused on our repairs and maintenance services and anti-social behaviour support.

We’ve also had lots of residents volunteer to be mystery shoppers and tenant inspectors, and more recently, we’ve had a panel of residents help us to select a new maintenance provider.

I’d like to end by saying a huge thank you to all of our residents who have not only helped us with this report, but also those of you who continue to give your time to identify improvements in our services.

A message from Pamela Gardner, Director of Communities and Neighbourhoods at East Thames Group

CONTENTSTenant involvement & empowerment 04Homes & maintenance 08Tenancy services 12Neighbourhood & community 16Board & management 20

03Report to Residents: welcome

Welcome to your report

2011 proved to be a busy year for the Housing Scrutiny Panel. We now have a great team of 11 residents who are passionate about improving the service East Thames provides and on behalf of the panel I’d like to say a huge thank you for those of you who took the time out to vote for panel members.

We have continued to undergo training to enable us to carry out our role effectively. This has involved understanding the business and performance information East Thames produces, how to carry out a scrutiny exercise and how to manage our meetings effectively.

This year we completed two scrutiny exercises. Using East Thames’s performance information we selected the responsive repairs and complaints service as the first areas we wanted to review. Resident satisfaction with these services is low and so we wanted to find out what East Thames was doing to understand residents concerns and improve the service we receive.

Our scrutiny involved reviewing resident feedback, challenging the Heads of service on their improvement plans and reporting our findings and recommendations to the Board. We will be revisiting these services in 12 months to test whether actions have been taken and resident satisfaction has improved.

We are pleased to report that a customer panel has been established with the sole purpose of ensuring residents are actively involved in the procurement of a new maintenance partner. This should ensure that the future service is more focused on the needs and priorities of residents; and above all in providing the highest quality service. In preparation for the coming year, we have looked at how other housing associations involve their residents in scrutinising performance and have reviewed our terms of reference making sure they are clear, transparent and fit for purpose.

Our scrutiny programme for 2012/13 again focuses on those areas that show low resident satisfaction. Our first priorities are to assess the anti-social behaviour service and carry out a more detailed review of how complaints are handled.

Coming to a close, I’d like to say that the past year has been a year of learning not only for us but for East Thames. We will continue to stay committed to working as a critical friend to East Thames on behalf of its residents.

A message from resident chair of the Housing Scrutiny Panel, Julie Spalding.

The Housing Scrutiny Panel

is a resident led group elected by residents, to scrutinise

and influence changes to our

services.

04

Above: Residents on the Ocean Estate

enjoy a fun day.

Tenant involvement & empowerment

Regular communication

— A choice in how to access our services. You can phone us, email us or visit our office or a neighbourhood surgery.

— Regular information in our quarterly resident newsletter Streetbystreet, online at www.east-thames.co.uk and printed information including factsheets, leaflets and a repairs handbook.

A fair complaints process

— A range of ways for you to make a complaint: over the phone, by email, letter, fax or in person.

Opportunities to get involved

— A range of ways for you to get involved including the Housing Scrutiny Panel, resident inspectors and mystery shoppers.

We promise you:

05



What’s going well?

Housing Scrutiny Panel

This year we introduced a Housing Scrutiny Panel, appointed three resident Board Members and we hosted a residents’ conference.

The Scrutiny Panel have started to scrutinise the areas within East Thames which currently have low rates of satisfaction – dealing with anti-social behaviour, complaints and re-letting empty homes.

Mystery shopping & tenant inspectors

It’s extremely important for us to get our residents involved in shaping our services for the better and we have a number of ways in which residents can help influence improvements. The mystery shopping and resident inspection programme helped improve the process used to deal with our daily post and how we deal with telephone calls. Resident inspectors helped us to review our process when residents move out and we re-let the homes, particularly looking at how we can relieve some of the stresses brought about from moving.

It’s always good to get as many residents involved as possible. If you want to play a part in improving the services we provide either as a mystery shopper or resident inspector call us on: 0208 536 3957 or email residentinvolvement@ east-thames.co.uk

Above: The East Thames Housing Scrutiny Panel in action

06 Tenant involvement & empowerment


Managing our call waiting times

We have set a really challenging target for answering phone calls from residents because we think it’s important that you can get through to us quickly. We aim to answer 90% of calls within just 20 seconds. Last year we managed to meet this target which was a great achievement.

This year we achieved this level of service 78% of the time – still much faster than many contact centres, but we hoped to do better.

At the start of 2012 we introduced a new IT system which was much needed, but unfortunately it made it a little longer to deal with your calls while we got used to the system and while we dealt with a few of the teething issues.

We’ve been working with our IT supplier and it’s now working well and we have started to see the performance begin to get back to our target level.

“The scrutiny panel is a great opportunity for me to represent my area and speak up about the issues and put forward constructive solutions to make our area a better place to live.It feels good to know that my input will make a change. If you don’t speak up you won’t see results.”

Moving forward...

11Elected residents on our Housing Scrutiny Panel.

9 The number of new resident associations we set up this year.

30Of our residents got involved in the mystery shoppers / resident inspectors programme.

Housing Scrutiny Panel member Gavin Palmer said:

Gavin’s story

£1,600Is the amount of funding we’ve provided to tenant and resident associations.

07

How are we doing?

Tenant Involvement and

Empowerment

How do we compare?

East Thames performance G15 average performanceG15 top 25%

East Thames performance London average performanceLondon top 25%

G15 benchmark

London benchmark

Percentage of complaints responded to in full within target time

95%

95%

24%

96%

95%

78%

70%

This Year Target Last Year

50%

96%

94%

90%

68%

60%

90%

95%

90%

72%

Phone calls answered in 20 seconds

Your query resolved first time by

reception staff

Satisfaction with our complaints

process

Complaints responded to

on time

Residents satisfied that

their views are taken into

account

93%

99%

89%

90%


We’ve missed our target and need to improve in this area

We’ve met or exceeded our target

We’re really close to meeting our target

08 Homes & maintenance

High quality homes

— Warm, safe homes with modern fittings and facilities which meet the Government’s Decent Homes standard.

— Homes that are kept to the same high standards that they were built to.

We promise you:

High quality repairs

— Repairs to homes and communal areas that are carried out quickly. Residents can contact us 24 hours a day, seven days a week so that emergency repairs are addressed within 24 hours.

— Annual gas safety checks to make sure your household is safe.

— Cyclical decoration works to the outside of homes and communal areas normally carried out every six years.

— Adaptations made to your home if you have a disability or find some day to day tasks difficult.


Last year we hit an important target with 76% of residents being satisfied with our repairs and maintenance service. This is up almost 10% from the previous year which is a huge improvement and shows us that involving our residents more is helping us get the best results.

09

Homes & maintenance

Homes & maintenance

Maintenance Panel

We recently introduced a resident maintenance panel who meet to discuss our repairs and maintenance service and the way we manage our properties. The panel has been involved in designing the improved service and has met with the three companies which are bidding to provide our repairs, maintenance and asset management service from April next year.

10 Homes & maintenance

Homes & maintenance

7,910The number of gas safety inspections carried out.

£2m The amount spent on the external decoration of 1,400 homes. 14 care schemes and 19 leaseholder blocks of flats were also painted.

130The number of blocks and care schemes where new communal digital TV systems were installed, for approximately 1,400 homes.

Right: Some members of our resident

maintenance panel.

Handling complaints

Last year we received 787 complaints, 24% of residents who made a complaint were satisfied with the process, so we know we need to do better in this area.

We know that part of the issue is keeping residents informed about their repair, so we’ve increased the communication from our team and our repairs contractors to address this. We also know that the upgrade of our IT system caused a temporary issue with repairs appointments, but this has been fixed and our teams have had extra training to ensure we get your appointments right.

We’re also continuing to do a range of inspections on repairs work to check the quality of the work and make sure it is right the first time.

Talk Back ThursdaysWe’re commited to providing good, quality sustainable homes for all our residents, that’s why, to ensure new residents are happy with their homes we’ve introduced Talkback Thursdays where our Development and Asset Management team visit our developments, talk to residents about their experience of living in an East Thames property and ask them to complete a survey. The information we receive helps us improve the developments we build in the future.

“This is a good opportunity for me to be a part of the change, rather than complaining about how things are done. Apart from this being a good experience and giving me an insight into how East Thames works, being on the panel means I have a role in helping choose a supplier who can provide a better service.”

Moving forward...

Panel member Ayo said:

Ayo’s story

11Homes & maintenance

How are we doing?

Homes

How do we compare?



G15 benchmark

London benchmark

Percentage of reactive repairs completed within target time

Homes that meet the Decent Homes standard

Tenants and shared owners satisfied

with the quality of newly built homes

Repairs completed

on time

Tenants satisfied with

repairs and maintenance

Homes with a gas safety

certificate

96%

96%

98%

98%

97%

96%

95%

76%

99%

99.99%

96%




This is based on general needs stock only.

£2,005

38%

96%

67%

100%

100%

95%

£2,235

52%

90%

75%

100%

100%

97%

£2,150

35%

Average cost of minor works carried

out to general needs homes

Percentage of total repairs that are emergency

& urgent repairs


12 Tenancy services

Tenancy services

Fair allocation

We have a range of fair allocation systems in place for our residents including:

— The Choice Based Lettings system which enables anyone wishing to apply or move between our properties, the opportunity to bid for the home they want.

— Home swapper which matches social residents that want to exchange homes.

— Incentives and help for residents who want to move into smaller properties.

— Regular tenancy verification so we know our homes are being occupied by the right people.

We promise you:

Financial inclusion

— Help and confidential advice on debt or applying for benefits for residents who are facing financial difficulties.

Homes that meet your needs

— A range of different homes to suit the different needs of people living in east London and Essex, including large family homes, smaller apartments, care homes and supported accommodation and a range of tenure types including shared ownership, intermediate rent and market rent.

13Tenancy services


Tackling subletting

Renting out your home without East Thames’ permission is a form of tenancy fraud. It’s unlawful and breaks the terms of your tenancy agreement, which could lead to you losing your home.

We’ve had a lot of success in uncovering subletting of East Thames homes. When we uncover subletting, we ask both the original tenant named on the tenancy agreement and the person that they are renting their home to, to leave. That way we can use that property to re-house someone who needs it.

If you think someone in your area may be subletting their home or living elsewhere, please get in touch. Any information you give us will be handled with the strictest of confidence. Contact us 020 8536 3953 or [email protected].

14 Tenancy services

35Illegally occupied properties were repossessed.

2,000The number of tenancy verifications we have completed in the last year.

Tenancy services

65%of residents in our rent arrears pilot project reduced their arrears.

Welcome visits

Welcome visits are important because they give our tenants a chance to meet their neighbourhood manager, find out more about the services we offer, it’s also good for us to check they are settling into their new home and neighbourhood.

Last year we took a proactive approach to welcome visits. Appointments were made with new tenants when they signed their tenancy agreement and these appointments were followed up with telephone calls nearer the time of the appointment to confirm residents’ availability.

Downsizing

We’re helping residents living in large homes with extra bedrooms they no longer need reap the benefits of moving to a smaller home. Tracey is an East Thames resident who downsized from a four bedroom house to a two bedroom flat in a neighbouring borough.

“My reasons for moving were financial. East Thames was calling me about my rent arrears and that’s when they told me that I could downsize and receive money for the bedrooms I gave up. East Thames arranged the removal van for me and paid for it too. I would say to people who are living in a large home, downsize. It can save you money on your utility bills. It’s saving me money across the board.”

Moving forward...

Tracey said:

Tracey’s story

£200kThe amount of extra housing and other benefits our welfare & benefit advisors have helped residents to claim.

15Tenancy services

How are we doing?

Tenancy

How do we compare?



G15 benchmark

London benchmark

Time it takes to re-let our general needs properties

30 days

23.95 days

23.95 days

90%

86%

1.22%

Time it takes to re-let our properties

(includes foyers and supported

accommodation)

Percentage of total rent & service charges lost due to properties

standing empty

101%

Residents satisfied with our

lettings service

Properties that receive tenancy verifications

as planned

Residents who receive a welcome visit

within 8 weeks

20.37 days

19.85 days

22.73 days

23.95 days





£307.5

3.3%

23 days

87%

76%

1.00%

110%

£303

3.7%Rents arrears - percentage

of all owed rent not paid

Housing management

cost per property

24 days

1.27%

85%

90%

100%

4.6%

None set


16

Neighbourhood & community


Above: Ben Jonson school children celebrate in front of their artwork

Safe neighbourhoods

— An anti-social behaviour (ASB) team who help you deal with ASB cases, who work with safer neighbourhoods

teams to prevent ASB and who introduce activities and mentoring schemes to help divert young people from ASB,

such as our after school class for young people at risk of becoming NEETs (not in employment, education or training).

— Monthly estate inspections to make sure the communal areas of estates are well maintained.

Vibrant communities

— Neighbourhood managers who look after a local area and as a result build relationships with residents and local organisations.

— A range of employment and training programmes open to anyone living in the area to provide local people with new skills and employment opportunities.

We promise you:

17Neighbourhood & community


Creating opportunities

We run a number of employment and training programmes to help prepare people for the workplace.

The programmes on offer cover skills in IT, presenting, communications, group working and CV development.

We also provide professional help for people to apply for work and prepare for interviews, along with opportunities to gain work experience and locate job vacancies through local employers.

To find out more about what employment

and training opportunities are available go to: www.east-thames.co.uk/employment-training or email [email protected]

We also hold community programmes to help bring locals together including our New Shoots programme which helps residents to experience the joys of growing their own food, we recently transformed three disused patches of land into green, blooming sites for local people to grow their own food and are always looking for new sites to transform, to find out more about the New Shoots programme and some of the other community projects we run go to: www.east-thames.co.uk/communities.

Did you know – about half of the reports of ASB are about noise

18 Neighbourhood & community

54%

239

Of our employment and training attendees found a job or took up further education.

The number of jobs we found for local people last year. That’s a job a day.

Quality estate services

Last year 55% of our residents were satisfied with our estate services. We are currently working to ensure we can offer you a service that meets all of your expectations.

To start off with we recently carried out an estates survey which looked in detail at the main areas of dissatisfaction. These findings have been raised with our contractors and we have produced improvement action plans to deal with these identified issues. We will be working with them to ensure these actions improve the service for residents and our neighbourhood managers will keep residents informed of progress.

Local offers

We continue to have local offers in place for our largest housing estates and a number of our foyers and care homes. The local offers set out the priorities for local residents and are updated at least once a year. So far, nearly 50% of residents are aware of the offers and 80% are satisfied with how the offers are improving their estate.

Dealing with anti-social behaviour

Having to report a problem about anti-social behaviour can be stressful and unpleasant, so we try and make the process as smooth as possible. You have told us that we need to resolve cases faster and keep them better informed along the way.

We have recently introduced a new approach for how we handle ASB cases which includes: — Clear guidelines for communicating with

residents to better understand your ASB complaint.

— Providing more regular updates to residents who have made an ASB report.

— Enhanced training for our neighbourhood managers.

— Purchased new equipment to support investigations and collection of evidence for noise nuisance.

— Worked with residents on developing a short film looking at how anti-social behaviour impacts on people’s lives and the steps neighbours can take to be more considerate. To watch the film go to www.east-thames.co.uk.

Moving forward...

2,515 People have taken part in our community and employment programmes.

26 Is our net promoter score for this year. That means there are more people who are very happy with our services, compared to those who are very unhappy.

19Neighbourhood & community


“This time last year I was out of work. Thanks to the Community Champions programme I’m employed, it feels great. It’s definitely been life changing for me.’’

Mohammed’s story

After being unemployed for almost three years Ocean Estate resident Mohammed

Rahman signed up to the free Community Champions programme to help boost his confidence and get him work ready. After graduating he continued to receive additional training and support which encouraged him to apply for the position of site supervisor at the local community centre.




How are we doing?

Neighbourhood & Community

How do we compare?



G15 benchmark

London benchmark

Percentage of residents satisfied with the way their ASB complaint is handled

89%

42%

55%

80%

60%

85%

65%

Residents satisfied with

estate services

64.7%

82%

41%

77%

56%

Estates rated silver and gold

during the estate inspections

Estate inspections that involve

residents

Residents satisfied with

the way we handle ASB

42%

42%

87%

82%

79%

69%



20 Board & management

Transparent leadership

— Opportunities for residents who have the right skills and experience to join all our boards, with three specific places for residents on the East Homes board.

— A joint approach to governance where board members work closely with elected residents on the Housing Scrutiny Panel to reach strategic decisions, scrutinise performance and implement improvements.

Effective and accountable management

— An executive team which oversees legislative and regulatory requirements from the Tenant Services Authority and other regulators.

— Several groups at board level which include independent members who make independent and fair decisions around housing management, development and asset management, risk and remuneration.

Board & management

We promise you:

21Board & management

This year we introduced the Customer Experience Committee which is chaired by board member Johanna Holmes and also includes Mehban Chowdery, Philip Fearn and Dominic Jebb. The committee is working closely with the resident Housing Scrutiny Panel, focussing on performance and improving the customer experience.

What has changed?

22 Board & management

Our group structure

East Thames Group is a registered provider, registered charity and company limited by guarantee. In addition to our parent group we have three main operational subsidiaries:

— East Homes owns and/or manages nearly 13,500 homes. We provide quality affordable housing, including social rented homes, supported housing, foyers, shared ownership and homes for outright sale and market rent.

— East Living provides care and supported services to just over 2,000 people in east London and Essex.

— East Potential is the part of our Group which provides programmes to help individuals lead better lives and develop communities. We do this through employment and training and community programmes.

In addition to the operational subsidiaries East Thames has East Treasury, East Regen and East Finance. East Thames is also an equal owner of Triathlon Homes, a joint venture with Southern Housing Group and First Base. It has been established to own and manage 1,379 homes on the Athletes Village after the 2012 Games are finished.

Board and governance

23Board & management

Our directors:Our senior team at East Thames comprises of:

– June Barnes, Chief Executive

– Geoff Pearce, Director of Development and Asset Management

– Pamela Gardner, Director of Communities and Neighbourhoods

– Suzanne Forster, Director of Finance

– Steve James, Director of Support Operations

East Thames is a member of the g15, London’s largest 15 social landlords, who together provide housing for 1 in 10 households in London.

The g15 works closely with central, regional, and local government; with private and voluntary partners; and with our residents to improve the quality of life for Londoners.

East Thames Chief Executive June Barnes is also a board member on the National Housing Federation, the organisation which represents more than 1,200 social landlords in the UK.

We have an overlapping board structure, with six core members who sit on all four boards – East Thames Group, East Homes, East Living and East Potential. We have two additional independent board members for each board and three resident members on the East Homes board. The Board meets regularly as one Group.

East Thames core board membership:Andrew Newell, Marianne Skelcher, Sheila Lewis, Shirley Watson, Mehban Chowdery, June Barnes.

East Thames Group board independent members: Tina Tietjen (Chair), Ashley West.

East Potential board independent members: Malcolm Basing (Chair), Alec Dick.

East Living board independent members: Debbie Sorkin (Chair), Rohan Hewavisenti.

East Homes board independent members: Johanna Holmes (Chair), Terry Price.

East Homes resident Board members:Philip Fearn, Dominic Jebb, Angela Williams.

We have two Group sub-committees chaired by Ashley West and Marianne Skelcher. There are also two East Homes committees chaired by Johanna Holmes and Sheila Lewis.

You can find out more about our board and the experience of our board members at www.east-thames.co.uk/board-members

Our boards

Board & management

29-35 West Ham LaneStratford London E15 4PH

Tel: 0845 600 0830 Fax: 020 8522 2001Minicom: 020 8522 2006www.east–thames.co.uk

Registered in England & Wales (4091100) Registered Charity (1084952) Tenant Services Authority Registered (LH4309)Member of the National Housing Federation

Report to Residents 2012

Documents

Transcript of Report to Residents 2012