Letting you know our progress
We promised to provide you details of our progress in delivering our local offers which you can find in the tables below. We have also provided an update in the summer edition of Isos News.
Tenant involvement and engagement standard
Improve access by:
| Our local offers | Action plan | Our progress so far |
|---|---|---|
| Ensuring services are delivered at a time and place that suits the customer Ensuring that all of our offices('service points') are equipped to deal with all of our customers. Maximising the number of queries that are resolved at the first point of contact and resolved right first time | 1. We will complete the development of our Customer Access Strategy by May 11. The strategy will give us a number of options so that we can improve the ways you can access our services. 2. In July 11 we will work with your area panels to gather your views to develop the Customer Access Strategy. We will agree with the area panels the service areas that are most important to customers and how they will help us to monitor our performance. 3. We will apply the Customer Access Strategy by agreeing with your area panels a plan to improve access to our services. We will make a summary available on our website by October 2011. 4. We will tell you where you can find information about our performance and what services are covered by October 11. | 1. We have completed the development of our Customer Access Strategy. You can see details in our summer edition of Isos News. 2. Your newly appointed area panels met for the first time in June. In the meetings we gave an overview of the Customer Access Strategy, outlining the three main changes that we will be making to ensure that you can easily access our services. 3. In consultation with your area panels, we are developing an action plan to ensure we are on track to deliver the main aims within the strategy. 4. See below. |
Improve communication with customers by:
| Our local offers | Action plan | Our progress so far |
|---|---|---|
Dedicating space in our newsletters to feedback on how residents helped us improve our service Simplify our performance reports and provide them to our new area panels | 1. We will agree with your area panels the ways that we should feed back information to you to ensure you are kept up to date about how we are improving services by August 11.
| 1. As well as this update on our performance and delivery of our local offers we will ensure that our website is kept up to date to include relevant performance information, action plans and information about the services we are working to improve. 2. We will work with our area panels to design and agree a performance management framework that is tailored to meet each of the panels' needs. We will ensure that each panel is provided with relevant local data, performance data and information from our business plan in order that they can scrutinise our performance, ensure we are meeting the national standards and ensure we are delivering our local offers to residents. |
| Informing residents well in advance of planned improvement works | 1. In the first edition of our new tenant magazine we will explain how we have improved services in response to feedback from customers. 2. The programme for the next three years will be published each February. Details of the programme will be sent to each tenant whose property is included in the programme. 3. We will write to you at least 1 month before planned works will start at your home to discuss the extent of the work and any special requirements you may have. | 1. We will publish our planned maintenance programme in February each year. Our maintenance teams will make sure that each tenant whose property is included in the programme receives a copy of the full programme. |
Develop our resident engagement by:
| Our local offers | Action plan | Our progress so far |
|---|---|---|
| Reshaping our governance structure to include 2 area panels which will be chaired by a resident and consist of a majority of residents - a key tier in our structure ensuring high-level involvement in the business Ensuring we encourage new participants and make sure they feel they are well supported | 1. Our approach to resident engagement and community investment will be developed by August 2011. 2. We will openly recruit residents to join the new area panels and hold first meetings by June 2011. 3. A training plan for area panel members will be produced each year by August. | 1. Our area panel members have a broad mix of skills and abilities and we will be supporting the panels by providing training, mentoring and ongoing advice. 2. We were pleased that so many of our residents applied to be on our area panels. The number of applications exceeded the posts available. However, we have kept a record of all the residents who applied or expressed an interest in applying. We are keen to ensure that, as we develop our resident involvement structures, all residents have a chance to be involved. 3. We are designing the new resident involvement structure to ensure that residents continue to be at the heart of our organisation, directing us and making decisions so that we can continue to improve the services that matter most to our residents. |
Home standard
| Our local offers | Action plan | Our progress so far |
|---|---|---|
| Increase our rate of 'right first time' repairs | We will train our customer service staff to identify repairs accurately so that we can, wherever possible, complete repairs during our first visit. We are piloting the use of Omfax e-learning with six of our staff in May 2011 and will roll out this training to all staff if it proves to be a useful training resource. | 1. We have tested a new training programme that should help our customer service teams to accurately collect and record information about the repairs you require. By improving this information we can ensure that our maintenance team, Isos Property Services, are equipped to carry out your repair on their first visit to your property. 2. We are developing a learning and development plan to make sure that our customer service advisors continue to provide a high quality service. |
| Increase the number of repair appointments made and kept | We will restructure Isos Property Services and our front line services, consistent with the results of our Customer Access Strategy and Better as One agenda, so that we can offer appointments for all repairs. We will determine the timescales for this once the results of the strategy are published in May 2011. | At the moment we are able to offer appointments for some repairs and gas servicing. We are developing our appointment service to ensure that all residents are provided with a specific appointment time for every repair. |
| Raise the average energy efficiency rating for our homes | 1. We will look at the most cost-effective ways that we can improve the energy efficiency of your homes, including such measures as boiler replacement and insulation programmes where necessary. We will make maximum use of government incentives for energy efficiency. 2. We will develop an Affordable Warmth Strategy taking into account the Energy Security and Green Economy Act by March 12. 3. Each year we will use energy efficiency measures in our planned maintenance programme at properties with the lowest thermal efficiency. | We are required by the government to have a Standard Assessment Procedure rating (SAP) for each of our properties. SAP is an estimation of the energy efficiency and performance of homes. At the moment we have an average SAP rating of 67.8 for our properties. To help improve the energy efficiency of all our homes we are carrying out a review of insulation measures and we are putting into place a programme of energy efficiency measures. This programme will be introduced as part of our planned maintenance programme. |
| Improve our customer database to enable us to take residents' needs into account. | 1. We will agree with our area panels the most useful ways of gathering feedback from customers and sharing our findings by November 2011. 2. We will continually collect information about our customers and use this data to understand their personal needs and preferences. | 1. We currently use a number of different methods to gather your feedback on the services we provide, including mystery shopping and conducting surveys. We are reviewing these methods and will ask your area panels to decide what methods we should be using in the future. 2. We also collect data about our customers in order to understand customer needs and preferences. We regularly review and update our records to ensure the accuracy of the information we hold. We are using this data to develop Isos' customer insight approach. This approach will help us use feedback from customers, staff and local knowledge to understand what our customers needs are so that we can respond to individual needs and tailor our services accordingly. |
Tenancy standard
| Our local offers | Action plan | Our progress so far |
|---|---|---|
Work with the fraud initiative to ensure the right tenant is living in the right property
| 1. We will make arrangements so that you and our staff can easily get in touch and report any abandoned properties or squatting tenants by June 2011. 2. We will carry out tenancy checks to ensure that the legal tenant is living in their home and that the property is being looked after. We intend to incorporate this element into our pre-tenancy checks and will amend our staff procedure by August 11. 3. We will act quickly, effectively and legally to remove unauthorised occupiers. We will be reviewing this policy and procedure by March 12. | We have come across a small number of incidences where tenants have sub-let their home or transferred the tenancy without letting us know. To tackle this we are 1. Introducing a system on our website for reporting any incidences. We are also supplying information in all the communal areas of our schemes. |
| Review our incentive scheme to tenants who under-occupy their home to improve effectiveness | 1. We will look into providing a number of options to support tenants moving to smaller homes by March 2012, including an incentive scheme and financial and practical support for moving and decoration. 2. We will review our allocations, decant and lettings policy and procedure by March 2012. | The government is limiting housing benefit for working-age tenants. The changes to the way that housing benefit is paid means that we need to identify tenants who are living in a property that is larger than they need and help them to find a smaller, more suitable home. We are currently identifying which tenants we think are under-occupying their homes. We will develop a plan to help tenants move to a more suitably sized home. We will offer support, advice and financial help to assist with moving. |
| Increase our supported tenancies by 5% a year | 1. We will respond to new development opportunities and deliver additional supporting people contracts as they become available. 2. We will maintain our Quality Assessment Framework (QAF) 'A' grades and strive to achieve 'A' grades across all services. The Quality Assessment Framework are the measures that Supporting People use to check whether we are delivering a high-quality, cost-effective service. 3. We will review our warden call service by March 2012 and use dispersed alarm services in appropriate schemes. | 1. We respond to new contract opportunities offered through the local authority Supporting People commissioners 2. We are running a pilot project that enables us to provide support to customers with individual budgets. 3. We have a system in place to ensure that our support services are of exceptional quality - we maintain Supporting People 'A grades' across all our services. |
| Reduce the length of time our properties stand empty. | We will use a flexible approach to managing empty properties (voids) including: - Using Choice Based Lettings schemes to reduce the number of first time refusals for homes. | - We offer Choice Based Lettings, which give new applicants more choice and control during every step of the application process. - We are reviewing the way that we deal with empty properties so that we can ensure that our homes are let quickly and to a high standard |
Neighbourhood and community standard
| Our local offers | Action plan | Our progress so far |
|---|---|---|
| Improve how we publicise the outcomes from our estate inspections and 'walkabouts' to encourage resident engagement | 1. We will make sure that we let customers and our partners know when and where walkabouts will take place by advertising these events two weeks before they take place. 2. We will publish the results of our estate walkabouts and estate inspections every quarter on our website | To give our tenants and other members of the community the opportunity to monitor the condition of the area in which they live, alongside our staff, we carry out estate inspections and walkabouts. 1. We are putting together, and will be advertising, a timetable of resident walkabouts and inspections. We will write to you to let you know when the next inspection or walkabout will be taking place in your local area. |
| Evaluate what works best in our prevention work | 1. We will develop diversionary activities to target areas that are experiencing anti-social behaviour and neighbour nuisance by March 2012. | Work under way.
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| Support and develop our Safer Neighbourhoods team and monitor its achievements | 1. We will report to our area panels and on our website the Safer Neighbourhoods team's performance against measures we have agreed with the area panels by August 2011. 2. We will publish the results of anti-social behaviour cases on our website by August 2011. | |
| Develop our ability to deliver more apprenticeships, 'preparation for work' skills and work-experience opportunities | 1. We will develop a work-experience policy by August 11 that defines the number of work-experience posts we will offer and our approach to advertising and selecting applicants. 2. We will establish our approach to the 'Welfare to Work' agenda by November 2011. 3. We will develop our approach to apprenticeships by March 2012. 4. We will develop a workforce strategy that is underpinned by our people strategy by March 2012. 5. We will develop our approach to placements by March 2012. | 1. We have started the review of this policy, which we will submit to our Isos Board for comment and approval.
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| Improve community cohesion by ensuring more vulnerable residents are supported. | We will provide a team of staff that are trained to invite and process applications for aids and adaptations to your homes by March 2012. | 1. We have adjusted our staff structure to provide additional staff and resources to support our older residents. 2. We are working with our Local Authority partners to agree which options we should adopt in order to remodel services so that they meet our residents' needs. 3. We are currently redeveloping one of our schemes, Trinity Court, so that we can provide high-quality accommodation and support services. |
| Develop our ability to support older residents | 1. We will provide a team of staff to manage homes and develop services to support older people by March 2012. 2. We will deliver our Older Persons strategy over the next five years. 3. We will develop our use of dispersed alarms within our tenant base by March 2012. 4. We will remodel and develop new schemes for older people. | |
| Increase our support to residents to live more sustainably through increased advice and support | 1. We will review the staffing level of the Welfare Rights team by October 2011 2. We will make available a money matters training programme for customers by October 2011 | |
| Develop our working with key statutory agencies - police, health, local strategic partnerships and local authorities | We will engage with community partners such as council and parish representatives, police and local schools through our community engagement work and targeted work to tackle anti-social behaviour and nuisance. |
Work in progress |
Value for money standard -
| Our local offers | Action plan | Our progress so far |
|---|---|---|
| Reduce our procurement costs for our replacement repair parts | We will establish value for money partnerships that guarantee an effective supply of materials for repair and improvement works by March 2012. | We are reviewing the suppliers and types of building materials we use for our planned maintenance programmes in order that we obtain the most cost-effective, high-quality components. |
| Improve the cost-effectiveness of our repair and maintenance team | We will drive cost efficiencies and customer satisfaction of the repairs service through our in-house repairs and maintenance service provider, Isos Property Services.
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| Improve the cost-effectiveness of our whole group through its amalgamation into one company | We will complete the amalgamation of the Group to achieve savings of £500,000 a year to reinvest into customer services and homes. | As you know we have amalgamated into one company - Isos. We have created four distinct departments - Customer Services, Property, Finance and Business and People. We are reviewing our staffing structures to ensure that we maintain a quality service while making improvements to ensure the ongoing cost-effectiveness and quality of all our services.
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Introduce resident scrutiny of our spending through involvement in the area panels
| We will agree with our area panels the service areas that are most important to customers and how they will help us to monitor our performance by October 2011. | Work is under way. As detailed, our area panels have met for the first time. We will be developing a performance management framework with the panels and will ensure that the panels have the relevant data and information so that they can scrutinise our performance |
| Increase our residents' involvement in the annual business plan review process. | 1. We will conduct a formal annual review of our business plan, consulting with our area panels in August each year.
| Our area panels gather information from all of our resident forums and tenant involvement structures so that their issues are taken to the highest level. We will ensure that information is passed on from our area panels and used to develop our business plan over time so that we can respond to emerging local issues.
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Governance and financial viability standard -
| Our local offers | Action plan | Our progress so far |
|---|---|---|
| Any changes we plan to make in amalgamating the Group have to continue to meet all regulatory requirements | 1. We will develop our Data Management approach and the profile and ownership of data protection principles by staff. 2. We will ensure our ongoing compliance with the Tenant Services Authority (TSA) regulatory framework (April 2010) in respect of local offers. 3. We will comply with equality and diversity legislation including the Equality Act 2010. | 1. We are improving the way that we collect, handle and store data in order to ensure ongoing data protection. We have recently carried out a "health check" of all our activities with the help of Orbit Housing Group. Orbit work closely with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on data protection within the housing sector. 2. We will be reviewing and developing our Local Offers for next year, in full consultation with all our residents. We will start the consultation in August. 3. We carry out, and have improved the way, that we conduct Equality Impact Assessments. These assessments identify any issues that we need to consider when developing and improving services in order that we maintain the accessibility of our services and do not unduly discriminate against any of our service users. 4. We have reviewed our standard job application form to ensure that we are compliant with current legislation. |