We’re delighted to announce that we have regained our accreditation by Tpas, the national tenant engagement organisation, for our work in engaging with our customers.
As an organisation, we really encourage our customers to become involved with us as their lived experience is invaluable to improving our services for all our customers. Being an ‘involved customer’ isn’t as scary as it may sound – we offer a range of different ways of involvement from answering surveys, to being a member of more strategic groups and projects.
The accreditation process has supported us to place our customers at the heart of everything we do and take every opportunity to involve them in decision making. This ensures we are fully accountable to the needs of our customers.
To retain this accreditation, we had to develop a strong culture of involvement and drive business improvement for our customers. Below, you can find just a handful of the things that we have changed due to customers involvement:
- We are now monitoring the number of repairs raised within the first 3 months of a tenancy to help us understand the condition of the homes when someone first moves in.
- There is now a survey when customers first move in to understand how helpful our staff were and the quality of their home and garden.
- We have amended many policies and procedures and made them more accessible to our customers.
- A new time slot was introduced to allow for repairs to be booked around school drop-offs and pick-ups.
- We amended our ‘lettable standard’ for clarity around decorative finish to walls.
You can find more information about our involved customers and how you can get involved here.
Caroline Berwick, Head of Customer Excellence, said: “It is a great achievement to have our tenant engagement approach recognised through the Tpas Accreditation process.
We’re committed to working closely with our customers to shape places they are proud of, and this accreditation has challenged us with useful recommendations for further improvement. It has also highlighted where we are doing things really well. The opportunities to learn from others during this process were fantastic and we can learn a lot from the way other organisations do things”.
Jenny Osbourne MBE, chief executive at Tpas, said: “We’re delighted that Greatwell Homes has successfully been accredited with Tpas. By completing the meticulous process to become an accredited housing organisation, they have demonstrated their continuing commitment to the values we share. Tpas believe that involving tenants in all aspects of service delivery in the housing sector is not only the right thing to do but also makes great business sense. We look forward to sharing the stories of how Greatwell Homes have used the accreditation process to achieve success by working together with tenants.”