INTRODUCTION
Each year we consider what our rents need to be to deliver the high quality service you expect of us. This year we have also considered how, in a very difficult economic climate, we can deliver our services in the most efficient way. A new office and new technology present a number of opportunities for us to be able to do this. We are issuing this newsletter to get your views on our rent and service proposals. We already know that you want value for money and quality services. Our review of the rent we charge and the services we provide aims to provide an improved quality of service for all our customers while at the same time continuing to provide affordable rents. We were already considering the opportunities that our new office would bring before we knew the outcome of the Government’s major public spending review (in particular the reform of housing and other benefits). The cutbacks in public expenditure announced mean that housing associations will have to provide services in an extremely difficult environment. Every housing association will be faced with the challenge of how to deliver quality services in much more efficient ways. We want your views on two specific proposals before we make any final decisions in February 2011.
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What our rents should be for the next financial year (from 1 April 2011) The proposed changes to how we will deliver services to all of our communities
Please have your say, your views are important to us. Please complete the short questionnaire and return to Thenew by Monday 31st January 2011 (in the enclosed prepaid envelope). You can hand this form into one of our offices or you can return by post. We also have an online survey form you can complete if you visit our website www.thenewhousing.co.uk If you wish to discuss any of this newsletter further, please contact Charlie Turner on 0141 550 7210 or charles.turner@thenewhousing.co.uk or Brian Gannon on 0141 550 7205 www.thenewhousing.co.uk or brian.gannon@thenewhousing.co.uk
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What are the Challenges facing all Housing Associations? The challenges are the same for each housing association, but we know that we need to be in the best possible shape to meet them. Housing associations that don’t face up to these challenges may not survive a tough economic climate. Some of the challenges are outlined below:
Benefit System Reform • Welfare Benefit Reform: The Government is proposing massive welfare cuts. The Government proposes consolidating the existing 30 or more work-related benefits - including jobseeker’s allowance, housing benefit, child tax credit, working tax credit, income support and employment support allowance - into a new universal credit. This will replace the current system to provide greater incentives for people to work and sanctions for those unwilling to do so. Claimants moving into work will keep more of their income than now, but face losing benefits if they refuse a job. To encourage ‘personal responsibility’, consideration is being given to paying this directly to the claimant, and not to the housing association. Note: generally, older people will be exempt from most of these cuts. • Housing Benefit Reform: The Government are proposing three main changes to this benefit: • • •
significantly increased payments that ‘non-dependent’ members of a household will be required to make towards the monthly rent; time-limiting of Job Seekers Allowance to 52 weeks - after this there will be a 10% reduction in Housing Benefit paid; limiting of Housing Benefit for working age tenants to the household size rather than the size of the house (e.g. a household requiring two bedrooms living in a three bedroom house will only receive Housing Benefit to cover a two bedroom house and will have to pay the extra themselves).
We have reviewed the impact of these changes on tenants reliant on Housing Benefit and in turn Thenew. These changes could mean £214,000 less Housing Benefit for our tenants. • New Powers for the Scottish Housing Regulator: This organisation monitors the performance of all Housing Associations to see if we offer value for money to both tenants and the Government in terms of any public funding we receive. The Regulator will require us to identify ways of reducing costs while at the same time providing quality services. Government proposals are to give the Scottish Housing Regulator much more power and control over individual housing associations including the power to transfer a housing association to another association. • Our costs compared to other Housing Associations: We compare ourselves to other housing associations in order to see how efficiently we are working. We know our staffing costs are higher than the average for other similar housing associations. One reason for this is because we have four different offices; each of which requires staff to deliver services five days a week from these locations. (See our service proposals on page 3 for our views on how we could deal with this). • Value Added Tax, (VAT): Increasing from 17.5% to 20% in January adding a considerable £173k a year to our running costs. • Inflation: the cost of living is currently at 4.6%, with predictions for the end of the year around 4.3%; longer term predictions averaging 3.9% for the following 12 months. 2
Thenew Housing Association
Your New Office and Delivering Services to you Next year we will complete the new office at London Road. This office is big enough to accommodate all our staff currently based in four separate locations (our current office in Calton and our offices in Bridgeton, Castlemilk and Cranhill). Our office at 2 Main Street, Bridgeton will be closed and staff will move across to the nearby new office. We are now also proposing to relocate all our staff to this office at London Road but keep the Cranhill and Castlemilk offices as customer service centres which can be used by Thenew staff, Area Associations, the local community and other agencies to deliver a wider range of services. This helps us to preserve the local link with our tenants which we know is so important.
HOW CAN WE HELP OUR TENANTS AS A RESULT OF THESE CHANGES?
We are recommending two main approaches to help protect our services to tenants. These are: • to reduce the impact of any rent increase, while • at the same time using our staffing resources and our offices to create a more modern, more personal, more responsive way of delivering our services. Our proposed service improvements include:-
Bringing our services to your home Dedicated Repairs Team
• A greater emphasis on delivering services to our customers in their homes (or alternative places) at a time that suits the customer. Our Housing Officers will be out-and-about in local areas, bringing our services directly to our customers. They can make an appointment to visit at a mutually convenient time. • Use of Wireless Enabled Laptops to enable staff to give ‘real time’ information to our customers in their homes or at any service point. A dedicated Repairs Team, (more efficient and effective management of our day to day repairs service).
A newly created “Income Maximisation Team”. (Responsible for management of rent accounts with daily liaison with our Financial Inclusion Team). This team Income will develop much better knowledge of the Benefits System and be more focused Maximisation on the daily management of rent accounts. We believe that the changes in the Team welfare benefits system, including housing benefit being paid direct to tenants, make the creation of this team essential. • Improved call management to ensure that calls to our new office result in customers speaking to the right person as quickly as possible. • Greater use of text and e-mail contact by using new software (e.g. makes Improved or changes an appointment with us by text, automatically receive a rent Telephone statement by email). Services • Use of ‘Freephone’ calls whenever a customer wishes to contact us (we will also ensure that costs are as low as possible for mobiles). We think it is right that when you need to contact us your call should be free from a landline or low cost from a mobile. An Interactive website. Our ‘I-Housing’ system will be accessed by tenants Making better use over the internet from their home or other internet location via a link from our of Technology website. Rent accounts, repair screens etc will be accessed by tenants in a secure, password controlled environment. Three Customer Service Centres at: 49 Blaeloch Drive in Castlemilk, 14 Ruchazie Place in Cranhill and at 97 Main Street in Bridgeton. Proposals for ‘customer service centres’ opening times are:- Customer Service • Castlemilk: Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons. Centres • Cranhill: Monday afternoons and Wednesday mornings. • Bridgeton: Tuesday afternoons and Thursday mornings.
www.thenewhousing.co.uk
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Your New Office and Delivering Services to you What will a more Modern and Efficient Service be able to deliver? The table below outlines the many different and new ways our tenants and other customers will be able to easily access our services in future. (Note: some of the investment in technology will take place regardless of the location of our staff).
Examples of Services Required Report a repair Get assistance with your rent arrears Request a rent statement Apply for a transfer Update your tenancy details Make a neighbour or anti-social behaviour complaint Raise an estate management problem Make a rent payment Arrange a gas servicing appointment Make an appointment with our Financial Inclusion Team Contact our Factoring Officer
Visit our London Road Office
Phone our London Road office
Visit our Local Service Centre
Home Visit Appt
Text
Online (from your home or a free internet location, eg. local library)
In summary, our services proposals are: • All staff based at our new office • New specialist teams to deliver repairs services and help tenants with changes to the benefits system. • A greater emphasis on home visits by our area Housing Officers • Making different use of some of the existing service locations • Using technology to enable customers to access our services more efficiently
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Thenew Housing Association
Our Rent Review Proposals for 2011-2012 The public expenditure challenges outlined here put added pressure on future levels of rent. We think however we can minimise the effect of this. The factors outlined in this newsletter will not go away over time. They need to be addressed now. Seeking to achieve greater efficiencies and even better customer satisfaction are a constant goal for us. We either grasp control of our future, starting now, or our future will be decided for us. We are proposing two rent increase options, which take account of current rates of inflation.
They are:
• a rent increase of no more than 5.3% or • a rent increase of no more than 7.3%
WHAT THE NO MORE THAN 5.3% INCREASE IN RENT MEANS This option relies on us reducing the number of staff that work for us. This will mean that all our staff (with the exception of some of our Housing Support staff) will be based in the London Road office and relevant staff will spend allocated time at the various customer service centres when they are not out visiting tenants in their homes. WHAT THE NO MORE THAN 7.3% INCREASE IN RENT MEANS This option does not reduce staff numbers nor does it change the current location of our staff (ie. staff currently based in Cranhill and Castlemilk would remain there). We do recognise however that some tenants may wish to keep these offices operating as they are now.
OUR RECOMMENDATION Thenew is recommending the no more than 5.3% option rather than the 7.3% rent increase option.
Looking beyond 2011/2012 and the move to our new offices, we will continue to embrace change and continue to explore new ways of working to deliver quality services and new opportunities to deliver further savings wherever possible.
www.thenewhousing.co.uk
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Our Commitment to you We will consult with tenants, residents and other residents groups in addition to RTOs about a wide variety of issues. The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 requires us to consult tenants on the following issues in particular: • • • •
before making changes to, or making new policies or before changing standards of service relating to housing management or repairs and maintenance, if the proposal may have a major impact on tenants; our Tenant and Resident Participation Policy; if we propose to increase the rent; if we propose to dispose of a property which would result in a change of landlord or owner of the house which is the subject of a tenancy.
Such consultation may be at an individual level, with all customers, or with selected customers depending on the issue. Thenew Tenant & Resident Participation Policy 2010
Contact Us
Calton Area Office & Registered Office 83 Green Street, Calton, Glasgow, G40 2TG Tel: 0141 550 3581 - telephone enquiries from 9.00am - 5.00pm Opening Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 9.00am - 4.30pm Wednesday from 9.00am - 12.30pm Bridgeton & Dalmarnock Area Office 2 Main Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow, G40 1HA Tel: 0141 554 5245 Opening Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 9.00am - 4.30pm Wednesday from 9.00am - 12.30pm Cranhill Area Office 14 Ruchazie Place, Cranhill, Glasgow, G33 3HA Tel: 0141 774 3030 Opening Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 9.30am - 12.30pm and 1.30pm - 4.30pm Wednesday from 9.30am - 12.30pm Castlemilk Area Office 49 Blaeloch Drive, Castlemilk, Glasgow, G45 9QJ Tel: 0141 634 7000 Opening Hours: Monday-Friday from 9.30am - 12.30pm
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Thenew Housing Association
YOUR VIEWS Please tick the option you prefer 1.
2.
Do you agree with Thenew’s plans to change the way we deliver our services to our tenants (as summarised in this newsletter)? STRONGLY AGREE
AGREE
NEITHER AGREE NOT DISAGREE
DISAGREE
STRONGLY DISAGREE
What do you think our rent increase for next year should be? NOT GREATER THAN 5.3%
NOT GREATER THAN 7.3%
Reducing the number of staff that work for us. All our staff will be based in the London Road office. No reduction in staff numbers. No change to the current location of staff in our Castlemilk and Cranhill offices.
3.
Do you have any other comments you wish to make about the rent review or the service proposals?
Name: Address:
Please return this form by Monday 31st January 2011
Our offices will close for the festive season at 12.30pm on Friday 24th December 2010 and will re-open at 9.00am on Thursday 6th January 2011 (our Cranhill & Castlemilk offices will open at 9.30am)
Repairs
If you require a repair which cannot wait until the next working day, please telephone our contractor on the following number:
01698 724800 This service should be used for emergencies only, eg. fire, flood, total loss of heating, total loss of lighting and power or gas leaks. For non-urgent repairs, eg. a dripping tap or loose door handle, we would ask that you wait and report this directly to our repairs team when your local office re-opens.
Be Prepared ... • • •
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What to do if your pipes freeze ... usually indicated by no water • •
TOP TIP:
During freezing weather, think about setting your heating to come on during the night for a brief spell, to prevent pipes freezing up.
make sure you know where the inside top-valve is for your water supply (if your house has one) try to make sure it is working - if not, notify your local Thenew office keep the house warm - remember, steady background warmth is better than high temperatures in the evening and cold during the day if you are going away from home, consider leaving your heating on at low
Notify Thenew Housing Association or, if closed, our contractor Be on the alert for burst pipes when they begin to thaw
Take action if flooding occurs • • •
Turn off the stop-valve and open all taps Switch off heating Notify Thenew Housing Association (or our contractor outwith normal working hours) immediately