Supporting customers

We want our customers to play a bigger role in helping shape our services and in the decisions that affect their communities.

Working in partnership with our customers

Listening to our customers and getting their feedback has always been of primary importance to us. As an early adopter of the National Housing Federation’s Together with Tenants, we were already making changes to how we engage and communicate with our customers, but this year, against the backdrop of the pandemic, we have accelerated our plans and implemented a number of new initiatives to improve our support and services for our customers.

Our Your Voice platform ensures our customers have a truly representative voice in the running of their neighbourhoods. Since the launch, seen major improvements in the way issues and ideas are communicated and responded to and have been able to increase customer involvement in defining our strategy and policies, from reviewing our complaints process and jointly completing the Housing Ombudsman’s Self-Assessment Form, to working with customers to develop our new Customer Promise.

This collaborative approach has established us as a sector leader in customer engagement and has been used to shape our new customer complaints handling procedures and in the completion of our Housing Ombudsman Self-Assessment Form, ensuring the self-assessment supports the views of our customers and that they, in turn, support the actions proposed.

Our Customer Promise

Designed in collaboration with customers with a clear purpose to help our customers and our communities to thrive, our Customer Promise contains four clear commitments: delivering an excellent customer experience; providing high quality safe and sustainable homes; bringing positive change to places and communities; and working together for a Better Day.

It prioritises safety and value for money, whilst also addressing environmental challenges around making our homes more energy efficient. We are committed to being inclusive and valuing the diversity of the communities that we work in and we will continue to deliver support with wellbeing and independence for each and every one of our customers.

Together with Tenants

We are committed to delivering excellent customer service and for our customers to clearly understand how we, as the landlord, are managing their homes and communities for them, which is why we are an official adopter of the Together with Tenants Charter.

Launched by the National Housing Federation (NHF), Together with Tenants sets out to strengthen the relationship between residents and housing providers through the creation of a four-point plan, including a new charter, that sets out in clear terms what residents can and should expect from their landlord, with responsibilities on both sides of the relationship. We spent 12 months working in partnership with Together with Tenants, the National Housing Federation and our customers to test out the charter and are a full adopter of the scheme.

More about Together with Tenants

Supporting our customers to thrive

We support our customers to thrive by making their tenancies as sustainable as possible through our Tenancy Sustainment teams, and our Better Days programme enables our customers to improve their finances and wellbeing.

A Better Day, every day

Our Better Days programme and our Tenancy Sustainment team work to support customers by making their tenancies as sustainable as possible and offer specialist programmes, which enable our customers to improve their finances, skills and wellbeing.

Customers who require further support are referred to our Tenancy Coaches who work with customers to ensure they can sustain their homes wherever possible, providing coaching, benefit support, information and advice, and can guide customers to the support that is available through our Better Days programme. This specialist support provides services across four principal areas – money, employment, wellbeing and digital - with free information, advice and guidance offered by our expert team and independent sector leading partners such as PayPlan, Mind and Citizens Advice.

Complaints procedure and reporting

We are committed to delivering an excellent service for all our customers and fully support the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, which is designed to ensure all residents understand how to make a complaint and what they can and should expect from their landlord when they complain, whilst also encouraging ongoing improvements in landlord service delivery.

For information on our complaints process and the service our customers can expect to receive, please see our customer complaints procedure.

For details of our self-assessment against the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code, please see our self-assessment form.