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Five years old and our best year yet!

As we look ahead to our sixth year, Nottingham City Homes is not only marking its anniversary today it is also celebrating its best year to date.

In the past 12 months we have seen customer satisfaction rise to 80%, thousands of council homes improved across the city and rent arrears dramatically reduced.

We also became a ‘tenant led’ organisation in September 2009 as Janet Storar, one of our Tenant Board Members, was elected as Chair of the Nottingham City Homes Board.

Although Janet sits at the helm, she is not alone, as more than 2,000 tenants and leaseholders are now actively involved with Nottingham City Homes, to help to shape our services.

Since April 2009 our successes and achievements have included:

The company

• We received national ‘Housemark’ accreditation for the work we are doing in partnership with Nottinghamshire Police, Nottingham City Council and the Nottingham Crime and Drugs Partnership, in tackling anti-social behaviour on our estates – we were the first ALMO (Arms Length Management Organisation) in the country to gain this accreditation
• Our Nottingham on Call (NOC) service retained accreditation with the Telecare Service Association Code of Practice parts I to III
• Our Gas Servicing and the Tenancy and Estate Management services were both highlighted as excellent examples of best practice by the Audit Commission
• We regained our ISO accreditation for Property Services and Housing Management. ISO is a quality management system that makes sure we have the right processes in place and are applying them consistently
• Alongside a steering group of tenants and leaseholders we set up the Tenant and Leaseholder Resource Centre
• Held our most successful Tenant and Leaseholder annual conference ever, with feedback from our customers being overwhelmingly positive.
  

 

Making the savings

• We cut rent arrears across the city by another £1 million – this is a year-on-year trend as arrears have been cut down over the past five years from £6.5 million to just above £2 million
• Former tenant arrears are £220,000 lower than two years ago
• Made huge value for money (VFM) estimated savings of £9.877 million
• Saved £7 million on the cost of boilers, bathroom suites and kitchen sink tops and taps through innovative e-auctions
• Our Procurement Team was announced in March as a finalist in the national Housing Heroes Awards for its innovative and effective procurement methods that have saved us millions
• For eight months in a row this year we collected more than 100% of our rent.

Employment and training

• We have created 97 employment and training opportunities through our standard apprenticeship scheme, our ‘One in a Million’ award-winning apprenticeship scheme (part of the decent homes programme) and the Future Jobs Fund
• Provided more than 90 work experience placements for inner city students
• More than 90 employees have achieved a National Vocational Qualification
• We have won two awards for our commitment to training – the East Midlands Training Award winners for Partnership and Collaboration at the National Training Awards and the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) Awards in the Training and Sustainability category
• Our Chief Executive, Chris Langstaff, was invited to Number 10 Downing Street in October 2009 to speak to a number of delegates, including the Prime Minister, to talk about all the work we are doing for training and apprenticeships.

Improving Nottingham’s neighbourhoods

• Reduced the number of void (empty) lettable properties to 276 – the lowest it has been since the ALMO began in April 2005, down from a high of 638 in March 2007
• Secured funding alongside Nottingham City Council to build 38 brand new family homes across the city – the first council house building programme in Nottingham for more than 25 years
• The Secure Warm Modern (decent homes) programme is seeing a window or door fitted every two minutes and heating and internal works (kitchens or bathrooms) installed every 20 minutes
• Overall satisfaction with work being done as part of the SWM programme is currently running on an average score of 8.42 out of ten
  
• During 2009/2010 all our estates were scored as being ‘two’ or ‘three stars’
• Over one year on from the start of the SWM programme, improvements have included:
  
  • 75,000 windows and doors to 10,899 properties
    
  • 4,401 heating systems
    
  • 2,025 kitchens
  • 1,642 bathrooms
  • 676 electrical rewires
• Created a brand new ‘Homelink’ website. Homelink is the choice-based lettings system for allocating council homes. Tenants use the website to view and bid on the properties they want to live in.

Chris Langstaff, Chief Executive of Nottingham City Homes, said:

We have a lot of challenges ahead of us at Nottingham City Homes, but it is important for us to reflect on the successes and achievements we have made over the past year.

Our employees, Board members and those tenants and leaseholders involved with NCH, have worked tirelessly throughout the year to achieve our best year to date.

Over the next year we will be working on a number of areas for further improvement, including:

• Modernising our repairs and tenancy and estate management services
• Continuing to improve thousands of council homes in our Secure Warm Modern programme
• Further reducing rent arrears across the city
• Continuing to reduce the number of void (empty) properties
• Supporting our vulnerable tenants
• Investing more in tenant and leaseholder involvement.
  

Janet Storar, Chair of the Nottingham City Homes Board, added:

I would like to thank all our employees, my fellow Board members, tenants and leaseholders, for their continued hard work that has helped us get to this point. We can now build on our successes and work towards our aim of becoming a three star organisation.

It is important that my fellow tenants and leaseholders continue to be involved along the way and make sure we are developing services and tackling issues that matter most to our customers.

For further information please contact Clare Hitchings on 0115 915 7246 or email clare.hitchings@nottinghamcityhomes.org.uk

(Friday 2 April 09:00:00 GMT)

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