Gardening and maintenance services update
We know how important it is to residents that we keep communal areas clean, and grounds well maintained. Through the tenant satisfaction measures surveys for the period April ’24 to September ’24, 25% of residents told us they were dissatisfied with how well we keep communal areas clean and well maintained.
We aim to make sure dissatisfaction is less than 20% and we continue to work through our neighbourhood improvement plan to act on the feedback we’ve received to improve our service.
What the feedback told us
Most of the feedback was around the cleanliness of communal blocks with fewer regarding grounds maintenance. We have also identified residents may be responding to this question in areas where Settle is not responsible for the communal space. We are working to ensure that more regular inspections are taking place before and after contractor visits to ensure the standards being delivered are those we and our residents aspire to.
What we’re doing
We’re continuing to review our cleaning of internal communal spaces, amending service frequencies, cleaning materials etc. to ensure our services continue to improve and are delivered in an environmentally efficient manner. We also want to ensure that residents have access to easier reporting when they want to report an issue.
Some of the other improvements we have introduced recently include:
- Our three- yearly cyclical tree survey has recently started in Letchworth to ensure that our communal tree stock is safe for residents and the public. We will be rolling this out to across our schemes in the coming 6-9 months.
- We are taking a new window cleaning and tree maintenance contract to tender in the coming weeks and hope these will be in place to carry out the early 2025 window clean and to deliver tree works from April 2025.
- During the winter we will make further investment in our landscape areas, including additional tree planting in Baldock, replacement of dead planting in Ashwell and Bedford and additional shrub planting in the Westmill neighbourhood in Hitchin.
- We are working alongside our contractors to improve the condition of outlying pathways and areas which do not receive any regular maintenance.
- We continue to work alongside our colleagues, partners and residents to carry out neighbourhood action days and other environmental projects and look to expand this work alongside North Herts Council and our contractors into 2025 and beyond.
More information about our responsibilities can be found on our communal areas and facilities page.
You can report a repair needed in a communal area, without using an online account – just go to www.settlegroup.org.uk/report-a-communal-repair
