Summer 2019 Welcome to Your New Look Newsletter. This Reflects Our New Branding and Fresh Modern Logo. We Hope You Enjoy This First Edition
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NEWSFor tenants and leaseholders of Solihull Community Housing Summer 2019 New look for SCH! Welcome to your new look newsletter. This reflects our new branding and fresh modern logo. We hope you enjoy this first edition. Message from Fiona Welcome to the but social housing remains around high rise buildings. summer newsletter – as important today as it was This new team will act I hope you like the new back then. as a one-stop approach look and the new logo! Our Engagement Team have to all aspects of safety lined up a number of events to which is an issue that It’s another busy we continue to edition which I hope celebrate the centenary of the Addison Act and we’ll have prioritise. you find an interesting some pictures of these in the and enjoyable read. The team will work next newsletter. in accordance with Along with lots of other I am also very pleased to guidelines from the council landlords, this year announce that we have just Hackitt Review, which Fiona Hughes we are celebrating the introduced a new ‘Safer conducted a thorough Chief Executive centenary of the Addison Act. Homes’ team. This is in direct assessment into all the One hundred years ago the response to the Grenfell circumstances surrounding Government of the day Tower fire tragedy. the Grenfell disaster. introduced this new idea to The Social Housing Green One of the key outcomes working closely with tenants. build and provide social Paper that was published of the Hackitt Review housing. this year led to a complete was around customer Look out for more information Things may have changed reappraisal of social housing engagement and our new on the Safer Homes team on a lot over the past century safety standards, in particular Safer Homes team will be our website. Give us your views Please do not abuse to be in with the our staff We are sorry to report that chance of winning we have had some recent cases of customers being Congratulations to Mrs Whitehouse, from Leader, Darren, to present her abusive to our staff. This is Chelmsley Wood, was with the £50 love to shop not acceptable. the latest winners of shocked when she received voucher. Mrs Whitehouse was our Share Your Views the call to say she was the overjoyed with the voucher We will not tolerate abusive prize draw. lucky winner. We went along and is looking forward to or aggressive behaviour from with Rent Arrears Team spending it! any of our customers. Mr Rogers, who is also from If staff do experience this kind Chelmsley Wood, recently of behaviour they will leave completed an online survey to the situation or terminate the share his thoughts about our call immediately. services. Much to his surprise, a few weeks later he received the call to say he was a prize draw winner! Thank you to everyone who have taken the time to complete a Share Your Views survey. Your feedback is very valuable to us as it helps us to improve our services and shape the way we do things. Everyone who completes one of our online Share Your Views surveys is automatically ■ For you to be in with the chance of winning a £50 voucher entered into our quarterly give us your views at www.solihullcommunityhousing.org.uk prize draws. 2 We’re working with you to improve our Jan Jackson Chair of the Scrutiny services Committee Hi everyone, I would like to update you all on the In the first half of the year we’ve been working hard at our tenant Customer Journey Mapping exercise engagement. This is in response to things you told us when we Scrutiny has been involved with. carried out our ‘Join the Conversation’ project. Members of Scrutiny have been testing the services SCH provide. We have been monitoring what happens when an issue is We are now starting to put things in place Another source of concern was the reported right through to when it has been to improve the quality of service we amount of rubbish on our estates. So in resolved. This helps us identify where provide. We know that some of our new response to this we joined in the ‘Great services work well or need improving. tenants felt we needed to do more once British Spring Clean’ campaign. Here are some examples of issues they had moved in. For more than a month we had teams of we monitored: So we now have a ‘New Tenants’ focus staff picking up litter across our estates. • In December, a Scrutiny member which involves joint working of our As you can see from the pictures on page reported having no heating and hot Tenancy Sustainment Team and newly 5 the teams worked really hard filling sack water to the Contact Centre. The formed Customer Service Team to after sack of rubbish. advisor informed them the repair would support residents in the weeks and We are also increasing our direct tenant be completed within 24 hours as it was months after they first move in. engagement with a series of summer an emergency. Within a couple of hours We will visit tenants in their new homes to events planned around the high rises. a contractor had fixed the problem. make sure they are happy. If there are any This will be a great opportunity to hear Scrutiny were impressed with the great minor repairs outstanding at that time we your views. These events are part of our service because everything was explained clearly and completed quickly. will aim to complete them during that visit celebrations around the centenary of the – or for larger works arrange a mutually Addison Act that first introduced council • A tenant reported a blocked bin chute convenient appointment to return. housing in 1919. in a high rise and the cleaning contractors were sent out to clear it. We want new tenants to be happy in their Unfortunately the contractors were new home and the ‘New Tenants’ focus ■ Take a look at page 6 to find out unable to unblock the chute and it had will hopefully make this happen. when we are visiting you. to be passed on to the Maintenance Team who had to remove the canopy to unblock it. The blockage was caused by a lodged sandwich toaster. This caused inconvenience to the residents and also costs SCH for calling out both the cleaners and the operatives. This highlighted that we need to remind residents living in high rises how to use the chutes appropriately. • A broken handle on a high rise fire door was reported to the Contact Centre and fixed within 24 hours. Scrutiny were pleased with how quickly it was repaired but found that waiting times for the Contact Centre were long. With My SCH Account coming soon it will be very handy for tenants like you and I to report non-emergency repairs quickly and skip the Contact Centre queues. ■ If you have any comments for us Kevin, Jake and Adam please get in touch. We are always form our new Customer happy to have your input. Email us Service Team at newsandviews@solihullcommunity housing.org.uk or call us on 0121 717 1515. 3 H A S R T R I N Y H ’S H A N D Y Install smoke alarms on Most accidental fires Stub cigarettes out We are proud to be 1 5 8 supporting the national every level of your home start in the kitchen so properly and dispose and make sure you can never leave cooking of them carefully campaign, Fire Kills. hear them throughout unattended and always The campaign aims to your home take care raise awareness of fire Test your smoke Don’t overload plug 2 6 risks around the home alarms monthly sockets and adapters and to encourage – watch out for loose Offer to test the smoke everyone to test their 3 wiring, scorch marks, alarms of older family hot plugs and sockets smoke alarms regularly. members, friends or neighbours who may Keep heaters clear from 7 need help curtains and furniture – Follow these simple steps to never use them to dry Plan and practise how help keep you and your loved 4 clothes ones safe: you would escape in a fire and have a plan B ■ For more fire safety information please visit www.firekills.campaign.gov.uk 4 We were delighted when residents joined in the Spring Clean A spot of Spring cleaning We recently enjoyed taking part in the Great British Spring Clean run by Keep Britain Tidy. The national campaign which ran throughout March and April, encourages everyone to take part in a litter pick and clean the local area. Our Engagement Team also great to work alongside organised a series of litter local residents. During the picks across the borough. campaign we collected more We cleaned up spots than 150 bags of rubbish – suggested by local residents our random finds included that needed a bit of extra care. an axe, a purse and even a In total we completed 10 litter dead pigeon. picks and 65 willing volunteers We would like to say a big took part. We had a number of thank you to all our litter staff volunteers and it was heroes! 5 Pop by and see us! Our Engagement Team, Jill and Mandy, are hosting a series of pop up events at our high rises over the Summer. The pop up events will give you the chance to come and talk to us about safety in your home, enjoy some refreshments and collect some freebies.