How is your feedback helping to shape our Estate Services?
We know it’s really important to our customers that your homes are maintained well inside and out. Last week, we met with customers to talk about the reprocurement of the contracting partners that help to keep the communal areas outside your home clean and tidy.
We’ve been listening to what you’ve been telling us through customer feedback forms, customer complaints data and the work of the community champions and all of this has helped us put together a set of specifications for our new contractors to follow. By taking this approach we’re able to factor in lots of individual feedback that you’ve shared with us, and really examine the experiences customers have had over the last few years.
Our complaints data showed us that communication needs to improve – especially around service charges, we need to respond to customer queries faster, making sure we investigate concerns thoroughly to resolve them and we need faster resolution when customers report that a contractor hasn’t shown up. To help this you suggested we make sure we have proof that contractors attended and did the job to the right standard. This will all be built into the new contracts. From your feedback, we also found out that the current type of contract we have, where contractors don’t have specific times to visit each area, didn’t work for you. We will be moving towards a frequency-based service – meaning we’ll be able to tell you when contractors are coming out. We’ll also share a customer-friendly version of our specification so you understand what work you can expect to see the contractors doing when they attend. With our grounds maintenance contracts, this can vary throughout the year so it's important we are clear about this.
We also surveyed customers last year for their feedback on the service and found similar themes throughout. They told us there was a need for improvement across the board, with customers saying they wanted a reliable, clear service that offered them value for money and kept their home and neighbourhood clean and tidy.
You may know that we’re legally required to send you a section 20 notice when we’re reprocuring contracts in your area. We sent the first set of notices out to customers in autumn last year, and customers will receive another letter within the next few months before any contract changes are made. As part of the section 20 process, we also held a workshop in October 2021, which some of you may have attended. We spoke to customers about the specifications and what we’d be looking to improve.
We’ll continue to take your feedback, not just throughout the procurement but as the service beds in. Our contract managers regularly talk to all of our contracting partners about performance, so feedback you give at any point in a contract whether it's new or old genuinely helps to make a difference.