Doing the basics brilliantly
We believe that everyone deserves a home they can settle in, and access to support and opportunities that can help them to thrive. This is the foundation of our organisation, and we always aim to provide great services for our customers.
Recently, we’ve also seen the introduction of new laws that will improve the standards of social housing homes. This includes the Tenant Satisfaction Measures, Complaints Handling Code, and the new Consumer Standards. We welcome these changes, because increased transparency and accountability will result in safer homes and services.
Jump to section…
- Your feedback: Complaints, tenant satisfaction measures and our Customer Service Standards
- Your home and community: Upgrades, anti-social behaviour, repairs and maintenance
- Building our future: New homes, priorities and online services.
1. Your feedback
Your feedback helps us to identify what’s working well and where we can make improvements. And, our aim to improve our governance will ensure that we are meeting the standards expected by our customers and the Regulator of Social Housing.
Here’s how we’ve used your thoughts and experiences to make positive changes to our services, processes and communications.
Complaints
If something goes wrong, we want you to tell us so that we have an opportunity to put it right. To make a complaint, please get in touch. This year, to comply with the Housing Ombudsman’s new Complaint Handling Code, we’ve published:
- How we’ve used learning from complaints to make improvements
- Our complaints self-assessment
- Our complaints performance and improvement report.
These reports help us make sure we’re handling complaints fairly, creating the right processes and training, and identifying opportunities to improve our services.
In January, over 40 customers joined in-person and online for our Meet the Housing Ombudsman event.
Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman, spoke about the Housing Ombudsman Service’s role in resolving customer complaints. He also told us about support they offer landlords to improve their services and share best practice.
Our customers were invited to ask questions about the services offered by the Housing Ombudsman, and there were opportunities to share their questions, experiences and feedback about our services.
Complaints satisfaction
This data is from a survey we send to customers after we’ve responded to their complaint. 80% of our customers were satisfied or very satisfied with how we’ve dealt with their complaint.
Satisfied that we understood the issue
Satisfied they were treated with respect
Satisfied they were kept informed
Satisified with the ease of making a complaint
We are pleased that our customers’ satisfaction for all our survey questions has increased from 2022/23. You can find out more the improvements we’ve made to how we handle complaints on our website.
Tenant Satisfaction Measures
Tenant Satisfaction Measures are a new way of measuring how well we’re doing at providing quality homes and services. We’ve worked with Viewpoint to collect our customers’ feedback about how we’re doing – a big thank you to everyone that shared their thoughts and experiences.
We published our results earlier this year, alongside what we’ve learned from the data and your feedback. Visit the Tenant Satisfaction Measures page on our website to find out more.
0%
of our of our Tenant Satisfaction Measures respondents agreed their landlord treats them fairly and with respect.
2. Your home and community
We want you to live in a home that you’re proud of. Here’s some information about how we’ve invested in your homes and community.
Upgrades and improvements
We completed these upgrades for our customers…
150 new bathrooms
81 new kitchens
69 heat source replacements
88 homes had new windows and doors
We also completed updates at our extra-care and supported housing schemes, including…
External decorating at 18 sites
Three new kitchens
Seven heat source replacements
One new roof
Spending and investment
You can read this year’s financial statements here. Our statements include information we are required to share with our customers, such as executive pay levels and management costs.
This year, we’ve taken important steps to improve our financial viability. We’ve worked with our Board and funders to ensure we’re proactively and transparently identifying any issues, and recognising where we can make improvements and offer better value for money.
Anti-social behaviour
We are committed to work with our customers and local partners to resolve anti-social behaviour. This year, we’ve recorded 368 anti-social behaviour cases, which is a small increase from the year before. Here’s a summary of our customers’ feedback on how we’ve dealt with anti-social behaviour.
Satisfied with how we’ve dealt with anti-social behaviour
Satisfied with the outcome of their case
Our customers’ feedback has told us that we need to clearly show that we’re taking all concerns seriously and that we’ll be responsive if issues occur again. We’re also improving how we explain the reasons for gathering evidence as part of our management of anti-social behaviour.
We are part of an anti-social behaviour best practice group involving a range of landlords across the north of England. This is proving a valuable forum for sharing learning. We also continue to attend neighbourhood action groups, complete neighbourhood walkabouts, and build positive partnerships with local services.
Repairs
We are pleased that our repairs satisfaction data shows that we are performing well and offering good services. We are always looking for opportunities to make improvements, and have recently completed a review to identify how we can offer better repairs and maintenance services and value for money.
Our first-time fix rate for repairs
Customers that are satisfied with our overall repairs service
Our work on damp, mould and condensation
Our Decent Homes Taskforce have continued to work together to ensure our customers’ homes are safe and well maintained. The taskforce is a group of colleagues from across the organisation, and they share their insights and expertise to make changes and improvements to services, communication, processes, and more. Here’s some highlights from the progress they’ve made this year:
- Our Eyes Wide Open campaign ensured that all our colleagues understand the signs, causes and impact of damp, mould and condensation (DMC) and our collective responsibility to ensure it is reported and resolved. We hosted information sessions with over 50 employees that have regular contact with our customers, and shared a recording of the session with some of our partner organisations, too.
- We’ve introduced a DMC satisfaction survey, and have used feedback to identify where we can make improvements. For example, we’ve upskilled more employees and changed processes to ensure that we can respond to reports of DMC more quickly.
- Our Refugee Week event shared lived experienced of people seeking sanctuary. We discussed the importance of offering people information, reassurance and support to report any issues with their home.
- We’ve improved our use of data, and capturing more information to identify how we can resolve and prevent DMC issues for our customers.
Our Healthy Homes handbook shares more about the causes and impacts of damp, mould and condensation.
If you have a damp, mould and/or condensation issue in your home, let us know on 0800 1380 380 or repairs@syha.co.uk
3. Building our future
We’re creating homes, services and plans that support our current and future ambitions for South Yorkshire Housing Association.
Customer Service Standards
Our new Customer Service Standards explain what should you expect from our teams and services.
They were co-designed with some of our customers, and have been introduced to ensure that we’re consistently offering great services that meet your needs. The Customer Service Standards will also help us to make the best choices when we’re changing or creating new services or processes.
If you have any feedback about how well we’re meeting these standards, please let us know by emailing enquiries@syha.co.uk or calling 0800 1380 380.
Our customer service standards
Surveying your home
We are organising surveys to check the condition of all our properties, and to make sure your home is safe and well maintained.
After all the stock condition surveys are complete, the data will also help us to plan for future maintenance and improvement programmes across all our neighbourhoods. Find out more about the surveys on our website.
More features on our online customer services
You can now tell us about a repair, pay your rent, report anti-social behaviour, and more on our online customer services.
Improving our online customer services means that you can access services quickly and flexibly. We’re still here if you want to call, email, or visit our office, and our online services mean that our email and phone waiting times are reduced.
Our upcoming new online features will enable you to report more repairs and book appointments online. We’re investing in developing services that meet your expectations, and help us to offer great support and value for money.
New homes
Our Forge New Homes partnership has secured planning permission to build 57 new homes in Beckingham. Forge New Homes’ profits are shared amongst our partners, and reinvested in providing new affordable housing and supporting local communities. You can find out more here.
Greener homes
We have prioritised building our knowledge and capacity to embark on energy improvement projects in the coming years.
Our long-term ambition is to improve the energy efficiency of our homes to make them warm, comfortable and cheaper to heat.
One of the key measures for this is going to be the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of our homes, and our aim is to make sure all our homes are above EPC band C or above by 2030. To do this, we will be upgrading 900 homes in the next five years. We’re right at the start of a long journey of improving the energy efficiency of our homes, and we want to shape this path with our customers. We’ll share more about our plans on social media and our website, and we’ll get in touch if we’re working in your neighbourhood.
Next section – Our people
