Winter Big Door Knock – residents’ feedback
We know how important it is to go out to meet and listen to residents’ feedback about our services.
Every few months we carry out our Big Door Knock where colleagues, including members of our Executive team and Board go out to neighbourhoods to talk to residents, so they can tell us first-hand how they feel about their homes and how we’re doing as their landlord.
In November, we visited neighbourhoods in North Hertfordshire which included homes in Baldock, Standalone, Weston and Westbury in Letchworth. We spoke to 263 residents and used the opportunity to ask them more information about feedback we’ve seen through our tenant satisfaction measure surveys. This includes satisfaction levels with how we keep communal areas clean and maintained.
We also checked in with residents about the impact they feel we make in neighbourhoods.
Time taken to complete repairs
70% of residents said they were satisfied or okay with the time it takes to complete a repair, saying repairs were timely and of good quality. 30% of residents were dissatisfied and the main reasons were around waiting times being too long. This was followed by the repair not being resolved the first time, with some residents still waiting for a repair to be carried out or completed and lack of communication and updates on repairs.
Our target this year is complete 90% of routine repairs within 28 days. We are currently completing 71% of them in that timeframe.
Cleaning of communal area
Almost 70% of residents were satisfied or okay that communal areas were kept clean, 30% were dissatisfied, saying they were dissatisfied with poor quality of cleaning. We aim to make sure dissatisfaction is less than 20%. We know how important it is to ensure we keep communal areas and grounds well maintained. As part of this we are in the process of agreeing a new cleaning contract to drive improvement and working on a neighbourhood maintenance improvement plan.
Positive impact in the neighbourhood
We asked residents how satisfied they were with our contribution to their neighbourhood. Just over 90% of residents were happy or okay with our impact in the neighbourhood, commenting on our good services and being approachable. 9% were dissatisfied giving reasons such as unhappy with grounds maintenance, lack of support with reported neighbour issues and anti-social behaviour, and unresolved repairs. Lack of visibility from settle in the neighbourhood and residents reporting they weren’t sure what we did in the area were reasons given by residents who said they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.
Listen and act
When asked how happy residents were with how we listen and act on their feedback, almost 83% of the residents we spoke to said they were happy with 17% saying they were dissatisfied with the services we offered them.
Escalations
Over half the residents we spoke to had something to escalate in this Big Door Knock. The most common escalation was existing repairs.
The feedback collected through this Big Door Knock is similar to the trends we have seen in our Tenant Satisfaction Measures for the last three months with a higher percentage of neutral replies collected in the Big Door Knock compared to feedback from the Tenant Satisfaction Measures.
We will continue to listen and act on the feedback we received and work with partners and other organisations to do our best to help any residents in need of additional support to live comfortably in their homes.
Have your say
If you would like to share your views on our services – you can tell us what we could do better or when we’ve done something well. More information about our Big Door Knocks is available in our How we collect feedback section
