Supporting Sustainable Tenancies
We are determined to enable and deliver strong and sustainable places and to deliver this our tenancies must be sustainable. We track the sustainability of our tenancies and this helps us to focus our support interventions where needed. In a challenging economic environment, we provide much needed finance and employment support to help more people sustain their tenancies.
During the year we worked with you, residents and partner organisations to invest in communities and delivering much needed projects targeted at the emerging cost of living crisis.
Demand for our homes is very strong; in 2021/22 we processed 3, 872 housing applications and let 913 homes. We focussed on making sure new tenants were kept informed throughout their tenancy start up resulting in increased satisfaction from the previous year (2020/21).
In 2021/22, we set ourselves ambitious targets to maximise welfare benefit income and support tenants into work to help with the ongoing cost of living challenges. We secured over £1.4m in welfare benefits and we are proud to have successfully supported 201 people into employment. While this is below our target of 250, the success we have achieved provides sector leading performance for employment work. Responding to the cost of living, we also provided personalised financial inclusion support throughout 2021/22, helping tenants access budgeting and debt advice, maximise their grant and benefits take up and help with access to affordable credit in partnership with local credit unions.
We listened
You wanted us to prioritise antisocial behaviour, explain the powers at our disposal, have regular scheduled feedback about your complaint, and know how we are performing.
We acted
We changed how cases are classed as an anti-social behaviour complaint and updated our process to include personalised communication. We introduced a new performance indicator to measure the time taken to take effective and swift action and resolve the complaint.
We listened
You said you wanted to be able to view your new home digitally at a time that suits you.
We acted
We introduced a new digital solution called ‘Matterport’ which enables a digital walkthrough of our homes. This has enabled new and potential tenants to view homes without having to travel.
