Health, safety and wellbeing
Health, safety and wellbeing
Our first priority at Settle is to keep our residents and colleagues safe; to protect their health and promote wellbeing.
We have a health, safety, and wellbeing board, chaired by our chief executive and attended by colleagues including our executive directors of customer services and development, our director of property, and our head of people and engagement. The group meets every month to keep oversight of and make decisions on matters linked to the health, safety, and wellbeing of all residents and colleagues. This group reports into the overall Settle board, providing an update to them at every board meeting.
Safety
We fulfill all regulatory responsibilities and often do more than we are legally required to do, reflecting the importance we place on this.
For the properties we own and manage, we will always look to make sure we are 100% compliant with all safety requirements, in particular through gas, electrical, and fire safety certificates we have in place. We report on this as part of our customer promise. We rely on our residents who allow us into their homes to complete the important safety checks we need to carry out.
An important part of keeping residents safe in their homes is through our repairs service and our emergency repairs service.
Fire safety
We know that fire safety is particularly important to all residents. There have been a lot of conversations around fire safety in the media recently, some of which have referred to cladding on blocks of flats. None of our buildings or blocks have any of the materials that the government has identified as dangerous.
A qualified fire risk assessor carries out a detailed inspection in each block of flats we own, at least every three years, with our staff also regularly checking communal spaces and working with residents to keep these areas safe. You can see the evacuation procedure for all our blocks of flats on the communal areas page.
We also work with Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue who visit homes to give advice on staying safe and well. Customers don’t need landlord permission for these visits.
Wellbeing
We will do all we can to support the wellbeing of our colleagues and residents, either directly or by putting residents and colleagues in touch with partners who can help. For colleagues, we have support in place including mental health first aiders and a 24/7 employee assistance programme colleagues can call to talk in confidence.
You can see more about the ways we can help residents on our support from Settle pages. We know that different things affect us all in different ways. We want residents to know that we are here for you through the good times and the bad, and if there is anything we can do to help, please get in touch.