The Inspection Zone update - summer 09 

Update - summer 2009

It’s been all hands to the pump at Sarsen since Housing Quality Network (HQN) inspected our services in December 2008.

Residents have volunteered to help us with our action plan to get services up to scratch.

They’ve joined a special project board – a team of residents, Board members and staff – to make sure we stay on track with improvements. They’ll be looking at all our services, including customer care and complaints, repairs, lettings, resident involvement and leasehold services.

Resident Margaret Williams said: “There’s lots to do but we’re ticking things off the list. We’re making real improvements all the time which residents should start to notice.”  

Here’s what we’ve done so far:

• We’ve agreed new lettings and cleaning standards with residents for empty homes. 

• We’ve trained our housing team about dealing with anti-social behaviour so they know what to do if residents have problems

• We’ve got a new complaints procedure to make it easier for customers to complain, if they’re unhappy

• We’re going to measure more than 35 different ways we do things to see how well we’re performing

• Customer satisfaction with our responsive repairs contractor Aster Property Management has gone up because we’ve improved the service. We’ve stopped doing repairs that were really planned maintenance jobs. Another department does these, leaving more time for emergency, urgent and responsive repairs.