our service standards
By working with tenants and other stakeholders, we have developed a set of standards that clearly explain what our customers can expect from us.
Our standards are broken down into ten themes:
we will:
- Ensure that information we provide to you is clear, concise, and jargon-free
- Provide information that is easily accessible
- Offer support to ensure you understand the information we give you
- Provide a range of methods for you to contact us
- Work with you to keep our records of your contact details up to date to enable us to reach you
- Continue to develop our digital means of communication whilst catering for customers with other requirements.
we expect you to:
- Behave in a way that shows respect towards our employees
- Let us know when things go wrong or when they go well so that we can use this knowledge to improve services
- Keep us informed of changes to your contact details e.g. phone number/s, e-mail address, or your circumstances to help us provide the appropriate service for you.
we will:
- Listen to your concerns and be honest, fair and impartial when dealing with your complaint
- Investigate your complaint in a timely manner and regularly keep you updated on its progress
- Learn from our mistakes using knowledge gained with dealing with complaints, to help improve our services.
we expect you to:
- Let us know if something goes wrong so we can put it right
- Specify the grounds of a complaint and co-operate with the investigation process
- Behave in a way that shows respect towards our employees – believe housing has zero tolerance to violence and abusive behaviour.
we will:
- Offer support to help you find a home; for example, helping you with application forms and the bidding process
- Register your application in a timely manner so that you can begin bidding for properties as soon as possible
- Provide you with all the information you need to make your tenancy a success when signing up to your home
- Ensure all properties we let are in a safe, clean and good condition
- Let you know when you have been successful in finding a home and give you regular updates on when we expect your home to be ready for you.
we expect you to:
- Provide us with relevant and accurate information when applying for a home
- Inform us of any changes to your housing needs whilst you are in the process of applying for a home.
we will:
- Provide a convenient way for you to pay your rent
- Offer support for anyone who experiences difficulties with paying their rent; for example, helping you apply for welfare benefits, offering money advice and employability services
- Take prompt action should your rent account fall into arrears
- Undertake recovery action when all other avenues of support have been exhausted.
we expect you to:
- Pay your rent on time and contact us in the event you feel unable to do so
- Work with us to clear your account should you fall into arrears.
we will:
- Regularly inspect your neighbourhood to identify and address any issues
- Work in collaboration with partner agencies to improve the appearance of your neighbourhood
- Encourage all customers to take pride in their neighbourhood
- Feedback the outcomes of issues that have been raised in your neighbourhood
- Deal with incidents of antisocial behaviour in a timely and effective manner, and work with partner agencies to come up with solutions
- Keep you informed about the progress of your antisocial behaviour case and support you throughout the process
- Pursue tenancy breaches and work to resolve them with partner agencies.
we expect you to:
- Let us know of any issues you are experiencing in your neighbourhood
- Respect your neighbours and behave in a way that will not cause distress or offence
- Keep your home and garden tidy and in good repair
- Report any incidents of antisocial behaviour to us and/or to other agencies (e.g. police).
we will:
- Provide you with a convenient way to report your repair
- Offer flexible appointments to carry out your repair
- Be polite and respectful when carrying out work in your home
- Where possible, carry out your repair on the first visit
- Make you aware when we are unable to complete your repair at first visit and keep you updated on progress
- Undertake a regular programme of improvements and give you effective advanced notice of when this work will take place
- Ensure that our employees have the relevant up to date skills, safety equipment and training
- Ensure that our contract partners carry out work to the standards we expect.
we expect you to:
- Inform us of any repairs that need doing to your home
- Give our employees access to your property to carry out any necessary work, including your annual safety checks
- Treat our staff and contractors fairly, politely and with respect.
we will:
- Regularly inspect your neighbourhood to identify and address any issues
- Work in collaboration with partner agencies to improve the appearance of your neighbourhood
- Encourage all customers to take pride in their neighbourhood
- Feedback the outcomes of issues that have been raised in your neighbourhood
- Deal with incidents of antisocial behaviour in a timely and effective manner, and work with partner agencies to come up with solutions
- Keep you informed about the progress of your antisocial behaviour case and support you throughout the process
- Pursue tenancy breaches and work to resolve them with partner agencies.
we expect you to:
- Let us know of any issues you are experiencing in your neighbourhood that affect your safety in your home
- Respect your neighbours and behave in a way that will not cause distress or offence
- Keep your home and garden tidy and in good repair
- Report any incidents of antisocial behaviour to us and/or to other agencies (e.g. police).
we will:
- Identify customers who require additional support and provide a variety of measures tailored to their needs
- Work in collaboration with other partner agencies to support our customers
- Support you to live independently by providing a housing association disabled adaptations service
- Support victims of domestic abuse and hate crime and work with partner agencies to try to resolve their issues
- Provide information to assist you in managing your tenancy
- We will endeavour to assist our tenants who have been affected by emergency situations involving their homes, e.g. housefires/floods.
we expect you to:
- Let us know if you are experiencing difficulties in managing your tenancy
- Work with our teams, if they are assigned to you, should the need arise.
we will:
- Provide opportunities for you to engage with us, including an annual satisfaction survey and regular customer surveys. And let you know on a regular basis of how customer engagement has improved services
- Offer and promote a grant scheme so customers can apply for funding to support community projects
- Feedback on projects we are supporting with community funding
- Continue to improve our engagement methods to suit all our customers.
we expect you to:
- Be open and honest
- Listen to and be open to the views of others.
we will:
- Develop 1,250 homes over the five-year period 2021-26
- 92% of our new-build properties will be for affordable rent or affordable home ownership
- All new-build properties earmarked for older persons will have wet rooms and level access inside the home
- All our new-build properties will be constructed within a minimum of 85% of the national design space standards.
In return, we expect that you to keep to all terms within your tenancy agreement (if you are successful in being granted a tenancy).
read our service standards in full
If you want to read our service standards in full, download the PDF here.