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What we have done:

• We recognised that our repairs service needed to improve. We committed to make the improvements needed and in the last 12 months we reduced the average time it took us to respond to a repair from 66 days to 20 days. During this time, we also worked with our operatives and contractors to improve the rate at which we could resolve a repair first time, improving this from 80% to 90%.
• We have set up new flags on our system after seven days from inspection if no repair has been raised. This prevents actions being missed and avoids delays for our customers.
• We have updated contact details on our calling cards (if no one answered the door) so that on the same day customers can call us and the Operative can be diverted back where possible.
• We are refining our approach to managing and delivering emergency repairs. We now call our customers with an accurate timescale and assess the repair on the phone, determining whether it can wait until the next day or needs immediate attention.
• We brought all our heating services in-house this year. This means that we are consistently and directly providing heating and hot water services to customers across all our localities making our services more efficient whilst also improving the quality delivered. Customers have already told us this is making a positive difference.
• We have worked with our customers on safety campaigns, for example a fire safety campaign with customers in shared buildings and a campaign to ensure a safe approach to clear communal areas.
• We have created a new team of Healthy Homes Advisors who focus on supporting our customers wellbeing and advise on how to prevent and manage damp and mould issues in their homes.
• We have used our stock condition surveys to create a programme of investment in our existing homes. We delivered year two of the programme in 2024 investing in our customers and their homes.
• We bid alongside partners to the Government Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund and match funded the grant, to enable us to significantly improve homes to ensure they are warmer, more energy efficient and more affordable for our customers.

What we plan to do:

• We will continue to improve our repairs and maintenance service as we know how important this is to our customers.
• We will continue to deliver the capital investment programme in our homes and scale up the amount of investment each year.
• We will move to the next phase of our project to make our homes warmer, more energy efficient and affordable and bring them up to a minimum rating of EPC C.
• We will create service standards to ensure customers are clear on the services we deliver and the standard they can expect.
• Through our community investment fund and our collaboration with partners we will invest in our communities, improving the neighbourhood environment for our customers.
• We will review the journey of a repair to identify touchpoints where we can be more proactive in updating customers.

What we have done:

• Following a recent estates survey with our customers, we received feedback that it wasn’t always apparent when our Cleaning team had attended our shared areas. We’ve set up a calling card pilot to improve this for customers. By posting a calling card through to customers who don’t have a notice board, it advises them of our visit and advises them to call through to the contact centre if they wish to raise any queries regarding the service.
• We have reviewed the time required to complete our grounds maintenance services, to specification, in all localities and have found that we need to increase resource in two of our localities to be able to meet the required specifications. We will be adding four new members to our team ready for the April cutting season.
• The equipment we use in some of our localities is not suitable for a cut and collect service when the grass is wet, which over the past few years has been the case for much of the cutting season. A cut and collect service is also a very expensive option. By investing in mulching mowers, that flick cuttings into the rotary blade of the lawn mower several times before dropping the short cuttings deep into the grass, we can reduce costs and invest this into the new equipment, which is also better for the grassed areas and more eco-friendly.
• We have created an Environmental Team to tackle fly tipping and bulk waste and mitigating fire risk, providing our customers with safer, cleaner communities.

What we plan to do:

• We will be looking at our Estates Service and restructuring our team to focus on the quality of the service that is being provided to our customers. We will reduce the number of direct reports, allowing time for managers to use photographic evidence to manage and hold performance meetings with the front line operatives each month. We will also work with our Asset Management and Localities teams to help inform where we need to invest in schemes due to poor condition.
• We will hold monthly meetings with our Estate’s team involving complaints, localities, leasehold and care and support colleagues to talk through performance and common themes so we can use this information to learn from and rectify the issues.

What we have done:

• We have created a customer section of our website to provide our customers with information, including the publication of a monthly infographic to show how we are performing against key areas of service delivery. This includes the performance of our contact centre, repairs service and the resolution of complaints.
• We undertake transactional satisfaction surveys so that we can gain valuable feedback after we have delivered a service, for example carried out a repair. This has enabled us to monitor satisfaction to ensure the improvements we are delivering are making a real difference to our customers. The surveys also provide valuable feedback so we can act on any changes needed.
• We launched our Tenancy Sustainment Fund which supports customers experiencing financial difficulties and at potential risk of losing their home. This year 280 households have benefited from our Tenancy Sustainment Fund. This is in addition to the financial and skills support we provide to our customers.
• We hosted our 2024 face-to-face Customer Roadshow events to engage with our customers across various communities. The feedback from these roadshows has been instrumental in helping us tailor our services to better meet the needs and expectations of our customers.
• We have sent out a communications survey to our customers to seek their preferences for the type of communications they wish to receive from us.

What we plan to do:

• We will continue to empower and support our colleagues to be able to respond effectively to our customers. Through our leadership development programme and our wider training and development offer, we will actively promote our GSA Way commitment to ensure our customer is everything.
• Working with our Customer Panel, we will increase communication with our customers to ensure we are keeping them informed of the key work we are undertaking such as our strategy commitments and how we are progressing.
• As well as continuing to publish our monthly infographic we will develop other ways to ensure we keep customers informed about how we are delivering against our key performance indicators.
• We will continue with our Tenancy Sustainment Fund and look at ways to expand the way we use this to support the customers in our communities who need it most.
• We will build on our locality model to increase our local presence and through partnership working increase our positive contribution to our communities.

What we have done:

• During 2023/4 we have had a sustained focus on understanding the root causes of our complaints and determinations and are taking action to address these. We have recognised and acknowledged there are areas where we have got things wrong or could have done better.
• We recognised our complaint procedure we were following during 2023/4 was not working in the way we intended. We have now revised our processes and introduced new ways of working to help resolve complaints for our customers more effectively. This includes supporting our vulnerable customers, making reasonable adjustments and improving our customer contact service standard.
• We are committed to learning from complaints and have several established ways of doing this. These include sharing outcomes and actions with colleagues, using a complaints dashboard to identify root causes and capturing quarterly learning updates and service improvements.
• We have aligned the structure of our Customer Care Team and increased resourcing in the team so that we can respond to complaints more quickly. We now have a dedicated team within our contact centre to resolve less complex complaints within five working days.

What we plan to do:

• We will continue to make improvements both to our complaints handling processes and the root-cause issues which contribute to our complaint volumes.
• We have implemented a high volume of service improvement activity over the last year, and we are committed to ensuring these changes are fully embedded and consistently applied to ensure a step change in our customer experience.
• We will continue to ask customers what they think of our services and share this with colleagues, to ensure we can continue to positively respond to our customer feedback and help shape our services.

What we have done:

• We have updated our Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) Policy and Procedure which is now being implemented by all localities. This has involved training frontline housing colleagues on anti-social behaviour case management, reinforcing our early intervention approach to tackling ASB.

What we plan to do:

• We will continue to use Starter Tenancies to support first time customers to manage their tenancy successfully.
• We will be extending our offer of how customers can report ASB to us by introducing React Remote which provides customers with direct access to us so they can provide real time updates on nuisance they have experienced allowing a swifter response to resolve this.