A message from our Interim CEO
Welcome to our summer Resident Update newsletter, which contains service information updates for residents across all of our homes.
In this edition, you will find the latest news on:
• Fire prevention, and how you can help us to keep your homes safe.
• The support and advice that we make available for residents who want support in managing their finances.
• Some of the great volunteering opportunities that we offer.
Partnership Talks Update:
We wrote to all residents last November to let you know that Octavia is entering into partnership talks with the Abri Group.
Economic pressures are continuing to cause challenges across the housing sector. We believe that a partnership with another housing association with a similar ethos to ours would make us a much stronger organisation.
It would enable us to invest more in our homes and our communities, make us more financially resilient and, in the longer term, enable us to build more homes for Londoners. Abri was chosen as our preferred partner by Octavia’s board following a rigorous process, and the two organisations are continuing to work towards this completion of this potential partnership.
We want to know what you think
We believe that the planned partnership is in the best interest of all residents (tenants, shared owners and leaseholders).
This is why what you think about this partnership is an important factor in this process.
The Resident Panel is being consulted, and it has indicated which aspects of the proposed partnership are likely to be of greatest interest to residents.
Next month, we will be writing to all residents, to give you the opportunity to let us know what you think.
We want to know what your priorities for a potential partnership are, so please look out for this letter and let us know your views, which are very important to us.
We will continue to keep you updated on latest news regarding our proposed partnership with Abri.
Kevin Bolt, Octavia Interim CEO
Tenant Satisfaction Survey
We’re committed to improving our services to residents and to letting you know how we perform as we progress.
Earlier this year, we used an independent market research company, Acuity, to survey a sample of our residents. Thank you to all residents who were contacted and gave your time to support with the survey.
The focus was on how happy you are with the way we deliver key services and how we maintain your homes. The survey also collected the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) introduced by the Regulator of Social Housing in April 2024.
Housing associations are required to report back to the Regulator on these measures annually – this will take place each summer. These results will then be collated each autumn and published on the RSH website.
You can read the results of our Customer Satisfaction Survey here.
Along with an overall satisfaction figure, the results are grouped into five themes:
• The home and communal areas
• Repairs service
• The neighbourhood
• Communications and tenant engagement
• Tenants’ comments
The results from the surveys tells us that there are some key areas where we must improve. We have developed an action plan to make these improvements and are committed to listening to your voice and involving residents to help us to do this
Home owners
Acuity also carried out an annual perception survey among our shared owners and leaseholders. The results are published here.
Octavia CEO Kevin Bolt said:
“We recognise that our first Tenant Satisfaction Measures feedback under the new regulatory system is disappointing. It falls below the level of customer experience we want to provide and our residents deserve. We are listening to residents and are responding to your concerns.
“Our absolute priority is ensure all our homes are safe, wellmaintained and enable residents to live supported and well in their communities. We are currently making changes to the way we do things to improve our service in a number of areas, so that residents will experience a much higher level of satisfaction going forward.”
Estate Services
Give
us your feedback
We want to hear from you
We want to know what you think about the services provided by the Octavia Estates Service team around your home.
The team includes Octavia caretakers, who provide general cleaning, grounds maintenance, window cleaning and tree management.
Your feedback helps us to understand where services need developing and how we can improve your experience of living in an Octavia home.
Please scan the QR code below, or click here to complete the form. You will be asked to enter your address; this helps us to tailor our improvements to each location.
Your feedback will be monitored and responded to by the Estate Services management team, and will be used to improve services around your home.
Get ‘Money Wise’ with a free course
Our Financial Resilience team, in partnership with the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, is running a series of three-day courses aimed at helping people manage their finances.
Places are limited to 12 learners per course, so booking is essential.
Registration for each course closes on the Thursday prior to the commencement date.
Each session will run from 10am to 2.15pm. A free lunch is included. The dates for upcoming courses are:
• Tuesday 16 July, Thursday 18 July and Friday 19 July – 10am to 2.15pm
• Tuesday 8 October, Thursday 10 and Friday 11 October –10am to 2.15pm
• Tuesday 28 Jan, Thursday 30 Jan and Friday 31 Jan 2025 –10am to 2.15pm
All Money Wise courses will take place at The Reed, 28 Convent Gardens, London, W11 1NH.
To find out more or book a place, please contact housingandemployment@rbkc.gov.uk or call 020 7361 2070.
Help with cost of living
Struggling to pay your bills? We are here to help.
If you are struggling to pay your essential household bills, we can provide help and advice with:
• what to do if your income is reduced or you become unemployed
• making new benefit claims and challenging benefit decisions
• paying essential bills or buying food
• getting into rent arrears or the risk of losing your home
• information about other organisations that may be able to help
Please don’t delay in contacting us if you are struggling or worried about managing your essential bills or paying your rent - we are here to help.
Call us on 020 8354 5500. For further financial support and advice, please email: financial.resilience@octavia.org.uk, or read the financial support information on our website.
Access to food banks
We know this continues to be a financially challenging time for many people and that sometimes they may need extra support with essentials such as food. We partner with foodbanks across London, which we can refer people to if they need it.
If you need help with accessing food, get in touch with us to talk to us in confidence about local support available. You can email us at: foodbank.referrals@octaviafoundation.org.uk. We aim to respond to within three working days.
What to flush?
A large number of Octavia homes are Victorian builds with narrower drainage systems than modern properties. The only product that should be flushed down any toilet is tissue paper, and for older builds this is even more important.
Baby wipes, nappies, sanitary products, paper towels and cotton wool pads should all be disposed of in the correct waste or recycling bin. When these are flushed down toilets, they can cause severe blockages, burst pipes, and even lead to flooding and sewage leaks. These events can be very disruptive and upsetting for residents, and they are costly to fix.
Most of these inappropriate products aren’t biodegradable, so flushing them down the toilet also contributes to the pollution of our rivers and other waterways.
By making the simple decision to throw this products in the bin instead, you can help to protect both the environment and your home.
Buy more shares in your home
If you are a shared owner, you may be interested in buying more shares in your home (also known as staircasing) and reducing the monthly rent you pay.
Currently mortgage rates are stabilising, and therefore it may be a good time for you to consider buying additional equity in your home.
We appreciate that buying a large share is not always financially possible, so we are looking at ways to enable the purchase of smaller shares. We will provide further details on this soon, including details on how to make an application.
In the meantime, if you are interested in buying a share of 10% or more, please contact our Sales Services Team at sales.services@octavia.org. uk.
Fire safety at home
Your safety is our top priority; let’s continue to work together to ensure fire safety in your home.
• Use of balconies
With the warmer weather, residents are using outside areas such as balconies and terraces more to relax and socialise with friends. While we encourage residents to enjoy these spaces, please continue to be vigilant about fire safety.
• BBQs are not permitted
For resident safety, use of BBQs, or other outdoor cooking equipment, is not allowed on balconies or ground floor terraces at any of our homes. It is not permitted to store any flammable items on balconies or on the ground floor next to external walls, including gas and other fuel for BBQs.
• Take care with candles and smoking
Never leave a lit candle unattended inside your home or on your balcony. Always use a heat-resistant holder on a stable surface. Tea lights can melt
through plastic surfaces. Make sure you put out any candles, incense and oil burners when you leave the area and especially before you go to bed. Keep flammable items out of reach of children and be particularly vigilant using them if you have children or pets in your household. Ensure lit cigarettes are always put out properly before they are disposed of.
• Fire safety outside of your home
Your building will have a fire safety notice displayed on the wall in the communal area with details of what you and your household should do in the event of a fire. Make sure you are aware of this information. Make sure all building exit routes are kept clear at all times – never leave your belongings or rubbish in corridors, the lift lobby or on stairs, as it could prevent you and your neighbours from escaping quickly in the event of a fire. Always keep fire doors closed at all times.
Do you need assistance with leaving your home in an emergency?
If you, or a member of your household, require assistance to be able to leave your home in an emergency, please let us know by speaking to our contact team on 0208 354 5500. You can also email us at info@octavia.org.uk. We will get in touch with you to talk about your needs, and arrange to visit you if we need to. During a visit we can talk through the fire safety arrangements for your building and discuss any additional support needs you may have with you. For more information about fire safety in the home visit the London Fire Brigade website.
What volunteering can do for you
Volunteering is a great way of giving back to the community or supporting a cause, and it also gives a lot to the people who do it.
Jill, one of our Octavia Retail volunteers, recently received an award for her hard work and dedication as a volunteer in our Ealing Octavia charity shop. When asked about her volunteering experience, she shared how much it had changed her life for the better.
During the last Covid-19 lockdown Jill was made redundant from her job, only to find out a few months later that she needed surgery for a brain tumour. She said:
‘It was awful. My confidence had gone completely – I became shy for the first time in my life.’
After months of recovery, Jill decided to apply to become a volunteer at our Ealing shop; it was in an ideal location for her, and the team was warm and welcoming. Within a few days of applying, the manager had asked her to join the team, and she hasn’t looked back since:
‘Volunteering has helped to get me back on my feet, and the team at Octavia Ealing are so lovely.’
Having worked all her life, which involved spending lots of time commuting and working outside of Ealing, Jill finds it brilliant to be able to walk to the shop every day and do something good in the community she calls home:
‘I am retired, and I don’t feel the need to work for money now – I feel this is my time to give something back. I’ve met so many nice people here, and it feels great to do something with a real purpose in my community.’
For information on our other volunteering opportunities at Octavia, click here.
Could you be a befriender?
Our befriending service provides crucial one-to-one support for vulnerable and lonely adults in central and west London.
The Octavia Foundation is looking for people to volunteer to spend just one hour a week with an isolated older person in our local community.
Volunteers are carefully matched with a service-user, taking into account shared interests, locality, and specific needs.
For some, the hour may be spent simply chatting over a cup of tea. For others, a walk in the park or doing some shopping may be preferred. Either way, the visits help to reduce loneliness, and often lead to long-lasting friendships.
Befriending has great benefits for our volunteers too; it can help to build confidence and develop transferrable skills. Developing a relationship with an isolated person can also be a deeply fulfilling experience. One of our volunteers, Zhihua, says that her English-speaking skills have improved through the conversations she has with her befriending partner – just one example of how our befriending service can enrich the lives of the people who volunteer.
Could you benefit from having a befriender?
If you are an Octavia resident who is aged over 50 and are feeling lonely or isolated, and your local council is Westminster or Kensington & Chelsea, then you can register for our befriending and outreach service.
Find out more here.
Resident Panel update
Our Resident Panel has been busy in recent months discussing the potential partnership with Abri and how this could improve services to residents. The Panel has also been involved in designing how all residents will be given a chance to have their say on what is important to them, before any decision on the potential partnership goes ahead.
The Panel has also been focusing on service improvement priorities they identified last summer, including:
• Scrutinising Octavia’s approach for setting rent and service charges, advocating for residents who have struggled with previous rent increases
• Reviewing changes made to our Anti-Social Behaviour Policy, to ensure their previous recommendations on creating a dedicated approach for neighbour disputes has been taken into account
• Giving their views on Octavia’s planned approach to improving compliance and building safety
• Continuing to monitor Octavia’s service performance and resident engagement activity
Responding to your concerns
Over the last few months, we have met with residents at several of our schemes to discuss local concerns they had raised with us, including:
• Supporting shared owner residents through representing their service and communication grievances to the managing agents.
• Successfully addressed low level neighbour disputes and ASB issues at schemes.
If you have an issue that you would like to report to us, you can do this by calling 020 8354 5500 or emailing us at info@octavia.org.uk.
If you would like to raise a concern with the Resident Panel, or if you would like to know more about how you can get involved, you can contact us at: be.involved@octavia.org.uk
Compliments, comments and complaints
We welcome all kinds of feedback on our services. Your feedback helps us to improve our services to you, and to know what areas we are doing well in and where we need to improve.
To contact us to comment or provided feedback on a service you have received, please email: info@octavia.org.uk
Making a complaint
If you wish to make a complaint about a service you have received from us, you can find out how to do this on our website here: www. octaviahousing.org.uk/complaints.
We have recently published our new Complaints Policy, which you can read at https://www.octaviahousing.org.uk/for-tenants/feedback-andgeneral-information/complaints.
Do you want to be more involved?
Residents are involved in shaping Octavia in various ways, including the Resident Panel, resident groups and forums.
If you would like to know how you can be more involved as a resident, please contact us at be.involved@octavia.org.uk or call on 0208 354 5500 and ask to speak to our Resident Involvement Manager.
Please help us to keep your information up to date
At Octavia, we use the information we hold about residents to help us provide a good service tailored to your preferences and needs.
If there have been any changes in the data you have previously shared with us, such as a change of email address or telephone number, or your preferred method of communication with us, we would like to know.
Knowing your preferred spoken and written language also helps us to make all our communications accessible to you.
You can update us about your preferred contact method and details by emailing us at info@octavia.org.uk. Please include your full name and address in the email.
Our housing team may also ask you if there are any changes to the data we hold about you when they speak with you. You don’t have to provide this, but if you can support us with keeping the information up to date, it helps us to improve the service we provide to you.
Rent statements
Over recent weeks, we have been actively working to address a system challenge that prevented us from updating the receipt of rent and service charge payments in a timely manner.
This issue has now been resolved, and enclosed is an accurate rent/service charge statement for the first quarter of this financial year (Apr-Jun).
We are very sorry for the inconvenience that has been caused. If you have any questions and would like to discuss your rent/service charge account, or need any financial advice and support, please contact us Monday - Friday on 020 8354 5500, between 9am and 5pm and we will be happy to assist.
Our Performance
The cost of living crisis has proven a challenging time across the housing sector, and we have worked hard to support residents throughout.
We are continuing to take steps to improve our performance on rent collection (including arrears), and on the re-letting of empty properties.
Last month, we produced a report on our complaints performance and service improvements, which you can read here.
