Swan Tenant Service Standards

WWW.SWAN.ORG.UK

SERVICE STANDARDS

At Swan, we strive to deliver an excellent service to all our customers at all times.

To help us do this it is important that our customers know the standard of services they can expect to receive from us, and our staff know the service they are expected to deliver.

Here you will find what these standards are.

We will check we are meeting these standards through regular audits, mystery shopping and surveys.

These standards have been designed around the regulatory framework for social landlords’ consumer standards and are divided into the four sections.

CONTENTS 01 •

Customer Care Standard

– Complaints and Compliments

– Equality and Diversity

– Resident involvement

02 •

Home Standard

– Repairs

– Adaptations

– Safety and Maintenance

• 03

Tenancy Standard

– Managing your tenancy

– Paying your rent

– Allocating homes

• 04

Neighbourhood Standard

– Communal areas

– Anti-social behaviour

– Community engagement

– Communication

– Lettable standard

– Your tenancy

– Estate services

01

CUSTOMER CARE STANDARD When delivering services to you, we will: Communication

• Apologise when we have got it wrong.

• Be understanding and helpful and deal with you in a timely manner.

• Let you know how we have learnt from your complaint.

• Be polite and friendly even when dealing with difficult situations.

• Publish quarterly information on the number and types of complaints we have received and our performance against our targets for complaints.

• Give you our name and contact details when we communicate with you.

• Use plain, jargon-free language.

• Provide you with consistent and accurate information.

• Personally answer 80% of all calls within 20 seconds.

• Respond to your emails and telephone calls within 2 working days.

• Respond to your letters within 5 working days of receiving them.

• Provide you with an out-of-hours number to report emergency repairs and anti-social behaviour.

• Communicate with you in a way that best suits your needs.

Equality and Diversity • Deliver our services in a way that does not discriminate against anyone on the basis of sex, age, race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, or pregnancy and maternity.

• Make our offices accessible to all our customers.

• Treat everyone fairly based on their needs.

• Be sensitive about religious or cultural dates when visiting your home.

• Publish an Annual Residents’ Report to tell you how we are performing.

• Carry out regular customer satisfaction surveys and publish the results.

Complaints and Compliments • Make it easy for you to tell us when something has gone wrong and when we have done a good job.

• Acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days.

• Resolve 90% of complaints within 6 working days.

• Keep you informed if we cannot give you a full response in 6 working days.

Swan Service Standards first published January 2016

Resident involvement • Offer you different levels of involvement so you can influence our services depending on what you are interested in and how much time you have to spare.

• Support you to form resident associations and help you with the skills you need to become more involved.

• Work with you to enable you to scrutinise our performance and get involved in service reviews.

• Publish a Resident Involvement Impact Assessment each year so you can monitor the difference your involvement makes.

02

HOME STANDARD When delivering services to you, we will: Lettable standard

Adaptations

• Ensure your new home is safe and secure, clean and in a good state of repair.

• Consider your request for permission to carry out an improvement to your home within 15 working days. If we refuse permission we will provide you with a full explanation why this is.

• Provide you with a contribution towards decorating if we have assessed your new home as being in a poor decorative condition.

• Aim to relet our empty homes within 16 working days.

• Pay you compensation if you move on and the improvement you carried out meets the qualifying criteria.

Repairs

• Help you to arrange major adaptations if you need them.

• Carry out minor adaptations to your home if you need them.

• Make available to you a copy of our Repair Standards, which set out tenant and landlord responsibility.

Safety and Maintenance

• Carry out your repairs in the following timescales: Immediate – 4 hours.

Emergency – 24 hours.

Standard – 15 working days.

Planned – 45 days.

• Offer you a range of appointments to carry out your annual Gas Safety check.

• Service and maintain any equipment we have installed in accordance with legal requirements and good practice.

• Provide a range of ways for you to report a repair.

• Ensure your home exceeds the Government’s Decent Homes Guidance.

• Provide you with an appointment time and compensate you if we do not attend at the agreed time.

• Aim to complete your repair ‘right first time’.

• Keep you informed about any delays to your repair.

• Ask you to identify if you have any specific requirements before we commence works to your home.

• Aim to decorate the outside of your home every 7 years.

• Provide you with a choice when carrying out planned improvements to your home.

Swan Service Standards first published January 2016

03

TENANCY STANDARD When delivering services to you, we will: Your tenancy

Allocating homes

• Offer you the most secure tenancy we can based on your circumstances and our Tenancy Policy.

• Let our homes in a fair, transparent and efficient way.

• Explain all your rights and responsibilities before you sign your tenancy.

• Make sure any service charges you pay reflect the cost of providing the services you receive.

• Have a proactive approach when you want to exchange your tenancy with another tenant.

Managing your tenancy • Help you to understand your responsibilities as a tenant and to access the services you need.

• Let you know who your Neighbourhood Officer is.

• Consider any request from you to change your tenancy within 10 working days of receiving it.

Paying your rent • Offer you a range of methods to pay your rent and other charges.

• Give you a minimum of 4 weeks’ notice of any changes to the charges you pay.

• Assist you to maximise your income.

• Make early contact with you if you fall into arrears and be clear about the action we will take it they are not repaid.

• Assist you to claim benefits and provide advice on debt management.

• Provide you with regular rent statements.

Swan Service Standards first published January 2016

• Take into account your housing needs when assessing your transfer application.

• Offer you financial support if you want to move into a smaller home.

• Provide you with an online transfer and mutual exchange service which is free to access.

• Assess your transfer application within 5 working days of it being submitted.

• Make sure you have a chance to view any home offered to you and give you information to help you decide if it is the right home for you.

• Consider any appeal against decisions about your transfer application or offer of home within 10 working days.

04

NEIGHBOURHOOD STANDARD When delivering services to you, we will: Estate services

Anti-social behaviour

• Ensure our Caretakers wear uniforms and carry ID.

• Take all your reports of anti-social behaviour seriously.

• Remove racist, sexist, homophobic or similarly offensive graffiti within 1 working day and other graffiti within 5 working days of receiving your report.

• Arrange an appointment within 5 working days from receiving your report or 24 hours if your report is serious.

• Carry out a minimum of 12 landscape maintenance visits each year.

• Aim to recycle 100% of our green waste.

• Make sure those involved or affected by anti-social behaviour receive appropriate support and advice.

• Work with other agencies to resolve cases of domestic abuse and hate crime.

Communal areas

• Work with other agencies to prevent and tackle anti-social behaviour in your neighbourhood.

• Provide a regular cleaning service for inside and outside shared areas.

• Make sure we use all the tools and legal powers that are available to us.

• Make sure lights work properly in corridors and stairways.

• Maintain communal gardens so they are safe and secure.

• Invite you to monitor the standards of cleanliness with us through estate inspections.

Community engagement • Work together with you and other partners including your local authority to make your neighbourhood a better place to live.

• Help arrange estate based activities for local residents.

• Support you to get involved in your community and develop neighbourhood agreements.

• Support our existing communities and regeneration projects through working with the Swan Foundation.

• Engage your community in decision making on the things that affect you.

Swan Service Standards first published January 2016

Delivering effective services, enterprising solutions and exemplary homes and communities.

WWW.SWAN.ORG.UK