Increased communication with residents has helped Sutton Housing Partnership become more proactive at meeting their needs. Managing director Steve Tucker explains how this was achieved.
The social housing sector is about so much more than the provision of shelter. It’s built on trust and the commitment to ensure residents feel safe in their homes and the communities where they live.
Social housing landlords that listen to residents can better understand people’s unique needs and address their concerns. That’s why at Sutton Housing Partnership, we’ve made changes to the way we work to encourage genuine connection with our residents.
These changes have increased communication and helped us to be more proactive at meeting residents’ needs.
Communication that puts residents in control
We manage over 7,500 properties, servicing both tenants and leaseholders with diverse needs.
People’s preferences when it comes to communicating with us often differ. Most of our residents like to check their rental account, report repairs and make payments themselves on our website. Those who prefer a more personal approach call their housing manager directly or come to the office to see us in person.
Giving residents options has significantly reduced call volumes, allowing our team more time to focus on those who need one-on-one support, especially older or vulnerable people.
Residents have told us that with more choice in how they communicate, they feel they have more control in their housing too.
Making it easy for residents to contact us has helped them to feel listened to, but it’s helped us change the way we work too. We regularly gather people’s views through online surveys, phone calls, and in-person meetings. Residents’ opinions directly influence our decisions, including how best to respond to reports of anti-social behaviour.
Residents told us they wanted more help to resolve issues with neighbours, so we work closely with each household to settle matters or clear up misunderstandings, involving mediators if necessary. This can be life-changing, especially for those who feel isolated or unable to resolve conflicts alone.
By viewing feedback from residents alongside information such as property locations in our NEC housing system, we can also identify hot spots for street level issues, such as fly-tipping or graffiti. This allows us to get help from the council or police to nip problems in the bud and prevent them from reoccurring.
Our closer relationships with residents has given us a much deeper understanding of the challenges they face and what support they need from us, especially when they have a sudden change of circumstances.
Early intervention to support residents
If a resident loses their job or their spouse becomes ill, life can change very quickly. We want to help people when life takes a difficult turn.
Looking at the information our housing managers gather when they visit a household helps us to spot when a resident might be facing difficulties. It could be damp or mould reported in a home where a family has recently started falling behind with their rent payments. If we know they’re finding it more difficult to cover the cost of heating their home, we can take action to help. Some timely debt management guidance or a rental payment plan, if appropriate, could be all that’s needed to help a family to keep their home warm and comfortable.
You can’t do any of this without reliable information, so our staff make it a personal mission to keep data on residents, their homes and neighbourhoods up to date.
A single point of contact for residents
The ‘New Deal’ is another change we’ve introduced to encourage people to feel understood and cared for.
Before, each housing manager had around 900 households to visit, which made it impossible to really get to know people. Even when a visit could be made, they would not have been there long enough to find out that a resident had recently been hospitalised after a fall or a redundancy had put a family under financial pressure.
As part of the New Deal, we cut housing managers’ caseloads to around 370 and they are now the primary point of contact for everything from rental payments to resident engagement and welfare rights. The only exception is repairs, which are overseen by a specialist team.
With fewer properties to get round, our housing managers have more time with residents for a proper chat. People are much more likely to reach out for help with non-housing related issues too, sharing personal challenges from money worries to health matters. Our team is also trained to connect residents with local charities and other agencies, extending our support beyond housing needs to make a real difference in people’s lives.
Keeping residents safe
Holding information such as updates from housing managers, reports of damage in homes and incoming communications in one place can be a lifeline. If we can see a water leak has happened in an elderly resident’s home, we will send a team out urgently to fix it, which immediately cuts the risk of them falling on a wet floor.
By bringing information together, we’ve helped reduce incidences of domestic violence too, a key focus for us in recent years. Seemingly unrelated details such as a lock repair request or noise complaint from a neighbour may not necessarily raise alarm bells when viewed in isolation. But together, these pieces of information might be early indicators of domestic abuse. As a precaution in these circumstances we might organise a check-in visit from the housing manager, accompanied by a domestic violence advisor, to assess whether further support is necessary.
We know we’ve been able to step in to help residents before domestic situations have escalated into something more serious. Vulnerable residents have also found a pathway to safety and hope for a brighter future.
The community approach
Residents who are comfortable in their homes with a thriving community around them tend to feel happier and safer.
With every improvement, we’ve strengthened the quality of our services and the community bonds that make our residents feel valued.