Latest progress
Actions following the Audit Commission’s Short Notice
Inspection
Take a look at our latest progress on our improvement
plan following our short notice inspection.
Inspectors said:
We need to improve our complaints
handling performance
We have:
- Launched our new Customer Relationship
Team (CRT). The team deals with complaints as well as processing
claims made for compensation.
- Launched a staff training
programme called 'Closer to our Customers' to improve customer
service. The training also covers effective complaints
handling.
- Set up a training programme to be
delivered to all RAPs between December and March 2011 explaining
the complaints and compensation policy.
- Met our performance targets for 81% of
complaints we received in October
Inspectors
said:
We need to publicise our
compensation procedures on the website
We have:
- Agreed a new single Compensation
policy. This was approved by our Group Executive team
and circulated to Board members for comment. Compensation
procedures are nearing completion and a summary is soon to be
publicised on our website
Inspectors
said:
We need to summarise the Resident
Involvement Impact Assessment and publicise it on our
website
We have:
- Publicised a summary leaflet
of the Resident Involvement Impact
Assessment on the website.
- Promoted this to residents in
the latest edition of Shine. This reached residents in mid
November 2010.
Inspectors
said:
We should continue our progress
on collecting and keeping up to date customer profiling information
and use the information to ensure that services are accessible and
meeting need
We have:
- Continued to collect customer profiling
information for our residents and now currently hold details for
73% of our William Sutton Homes residents.
- Publicised what we are doing with the
information we have collected in the latest edition of Shine
magazine in November 2010. See how we are
promoting this online...
Inspectors
said:
We should ensure that the profile
of involved residents reflects the views and needs of all
residents
We have:
- Drafted a strategy to deal with this
called 'Bringing down the barriers' in September 2010.
- Established where William Sutton Homes residents may
be under represented in terms of their diversity profile by
using the information we now have for
involved residents.
- Put in place a Need to Reach action plan which will
result in giving us much more meaningful analysis at a local
level.
Inspectors
said:
We should work with
contractors to ensure that they are delivering a fair and equitable
service to all our residents
We have:
- Collected profiling information which tells us about our
customers’ communication requirements and also any vulnerability
issues they have. We are making this information available
to front line neighbourhood teams and are now working to
build links between our, and contractors’ systems so the latter can
also access the data easily.
- Carried out an Equality Impact Assessment for responsive
repairs. This work helps us identify where we need to make
improvements to ensure that all our residents have fair and equal
access to the service. In November we launched an action plan
inline with this.
- Launched our new SWAT teams, each led by a
Group Executive Team member. Each team will assess whether we are
delivering a good service to all our customers across all diversity
strands. They will identify any barriers that may be
preventing that.
Inspectors
said:
We need to
benchmark repairs costs with top performers - to be reviewed
next year as part of the usual regulatory
checks.
We have:
- Carried out some benchmarking
with other London based housing providers earlier in the year. More
detailed comparisons will be made once we receive information in
2011 from Housemark, a national benchmarking club which we joined
this year.
Inspectors
said:
We need to
involve residents in the evaluation of value for
money
We have:
- Launched our new VfM Confidence
assessment toolkit. This enables us to assess how confident we are
that we are delivering value for money for a particular service
area. It also takes into account customer satisfaction
levels, how effectively we manage the service and monitor
performance, and how we compare with other housing providers in
terms of performance.
- Completed assessments for ten
service areas. A key part of the exercise has been for each Service
Area Champion to establish up to four priorities for
improvement and these are being incorporated into our Value for
Money improvement plan.
- Started plans to take these
assessments for discussion with resident members of our newly
established Service Task teams.
November 2010