Resident Involvement
Broxbourne Housing Association is committed to encouraging residents to get involved in how services are delivered to them. We would like to find out your views on the annual report we will be producing for all tenants later this year. The Tenant Services Authority (TSA) require landlords to produce an annual report for their tenants on how they are delivering services, how these compare to others and developing local offers of how services should be provided. The annual report therefore is an important document for tenants so they understand more about Broxbourne Housing Association. As the report is for tenants we need to find out what tenants want to know about. We would be very grateful if you would take a few minutes to complete this online survey (link to survey). Any responses received by 30th July will be entered into our prize draw and the lucky winner will receive £25 of gift vouchers.' We have developed a residents' involvement strategy and action plan so that we can support residents to be involved in whatever way they like. The full strategy is available here. The action plan can be viewed here. We are committed to resident involvement and every year we review how your involvement has changed or impacted on how we deliver our services. Our Resident Involvement Impact Assessment can be viewed here (link to PDF Document) If you would like to get involved to help improve standards, there are a variety of options available for you: Resident Board Members
Residents Panel
Resident Compact Meetings
Leaseholder Compact Meetings
Residents Day
Resident Associations & Groups
Retirement Housing Meetings
Focus Group
Electronic Compact
Resident Inspector Scheme
Community Audit Programme
Residents Newsletter
Editorial Panel
Mystery Shopping
Satisfaction Surveys
Complaints, compliments & suggestions
More Information
Resident Board MembersBroxbourne Housing Association is run by a Board of Management of 12 unpaid volunteers, made up of: - 4 residents, directly elected by all residents every three years;
- 4 community members with particular business, professional or social skills; and
- 4 Borough Council representatives.
Residents on the Board of Managers have the same voting rights as other Board members and represent a third of the Management Committee. We believe that residents know best what they need their housing service to provide, so it makes sense to ensure that they are well represented on the Board. Residents PanelThe next Residents Panel meeting will take place on Wednesday 11th August, 6.30 – 8.30pm at Scania House, 17 Amwell Street, Hoddesdon EN11 8TS. This friendly group is very important to how Broxbourne Housing Association is run. It meets every three months to review our service provision and performance, consider new policies and provide feedback from a user perspective on how we can improve the service we provide.
Resident Compact MeetingsWe hold a series of meetings across the borough (in Hoddesdon, Cheshunt and Waltham Cross) twice each year. The meetings are open to all residents and are held in the morning, afternoon and evening to enable residents the feasibility to attend at a time that suits them best. These meetings focus on service improvement and local issues. Our next Compact Meetings will take place in October. Leaseholder Compact MeetingsWe hold these each year to focus on how our services can better meet the needs of our leaseholders. These are often lively sessions, with discussion ranging from estate improvement works to resident involvement and anti-social behaviour. Look out for news of further focus group sessions in May and a Compact meeting in October this year. Residents DayMore than 100 people joined us for a highly successful residents’ day of fun and workshops last September. The children took part in a fun packed circus skills workshop, leaving the adults to talk to a range of our community partners. We also had workshops looking at creating better communities and supporting our residents’ needs. We were then treated to a surprise circus skills performance by the kids who juggled and uni-cycled for us. What was very encouraging was that we were able to attract younger residents to attend and we provided more information for leaseholders. More than 90% of attendees told us that they enjoyed Residents Day overall and will attend again next year. This year, Residents Day will take place on Thursday 26th August 2010, 11am – 2pm at the Broxbourne Civic Hall. If you would like further information about Residents Day, please contact Peter on 01992 453 776. Resident Associations & GroupsSetting up a Residents' Association could be a way to: make your collective views known to us on particular issues of concern where you live to have more say about the way services are delivered to your area to help improve living conditions and local facilities for residents to promote a sense of community We are keen to support residents to get together as a group and be involved in setting priorities for improvements where they live. BHA can provide financial and administrative help if you want to set up an association. We also work with local groups and other agencies to tackle larger local issues affecting several estates or a certain area of the borough.Click here for information on how to set up an association (PDF Document) Retirement Housing MeetingsBroxbourne Housing Association provides a service to 10 Retirement Housing Schemes; all of which hold regular meetings for its residents to ensure that our older residents are able to feed their views back about the quality of service they receive, and how it should be delivered to them. Focus GroupsThis is when a group of residents get together to discuss a specific topic. It usually lasts about two hours and can be facilitated by staff or an independent person. Focus groups allow us to explore a topic in lots of detail. We hold focus groups when we review policies and procedures and have consulted with residents to agree the topics that they wish to discuss. Lat year we held focus group discussions on: Anti Social Behaviour, Disabilities, Repairs, National Service Standards, Customer Service and Local & Younger Resident Involvement. Over the next year we will be holding focus group discussions on: Complaints Procedure, Community Rangers, Local Service Standards, Local & Hard to Reach Groups. Electronic CompactWe have established a group of over 80 residents whose preferred means of involvement is via the internet. We involve this group in planning our annual Residents Day and plan a series of consultation and involvement initiatives for them. This year, we will be encouraging online residents to get involved with helping us to develop a set of local service standards. This will ensure the views of residents who do not or cannot attend meetings are heard. If you are interested, you can sign up for online discussions about resident issues by emailing us your details.
Resident Inspector SchemeWe are looking for committed volunteers who care about where they live and like to keep an eye on their local area. You don’t need to come to meetings, you just need to check on what’s going on where you live and report any problems to us. These could be repairs that need doing, graffiti to be removed, rubbish that’s been dumped, grass that needs cutting or any other cleaning and maintenance issues affecting your community. We want to know what we’re doing right and where we need to improve. We will offer you training, provide you with reporting sheets and details of our service standards; and if you carry out at least one inspection every month for three months, you will receive a £10 shopping voucher. If you want to find out more; contact Peter on 01992 453776.
Community Audit Programme'We will be holding a programme of community audits on our larger estates over the next few months - and you could be part of them. A community audit is where residents come together with our representatives to look at the general area and tell us about the issues which are causing problems for you and your neighbours. We can then jointly agree a plan of action to improve your environment and the community. Click here for an up to date list of Community Audit dates - (PDF Document)
Residents NewsletterWe want to provide you with the best possible service; this includes producing a newsletter that tells you what you want to know. Broxbourne Housing Association issues a quarterly resident newsletter to keep you up to date with the work we're doing for you and the community Winter 2009 HOME newsletter (PDF Document)
Editorial PanelThis is a panel, which meets to discuss and advise on the content and design of the residents' newsletters, leaflets, reports and our website to ensure that they remain readable, relevant and up to date with residents needs. If you are interested in taking part in the Editorial Panel please let us know.
Mystery ShoppingOver the last year, a dedicated group of residents have been helping us to test and improve the quality of our customer services. They are our Mystery Shoppers. Once every 3 months they spend their time making anonymous phone calls to our offices with a number of different questions and problems for staff to deal with. Then they make a record of the responses they receive and tell us how well we responded to each situation. Our latest report can be found here (PDF Document) As you can see, our staff are still performing well in these tests but there is still room for improvement and thanks to the help from our Mystery Shoppers in keeping us on our toes we aim to get even better. Residents receive £15 in shopping vouchers for each round of mystery shopping they take part in. Further mystery shopping rounds will take place during 2010. To find out more about becoming a Mystery Shopper, call Peter on 01992 453 776
Disabilities ForumThe Disabilities Forum meets every three months to recommend improvements to the services BHA offer to residents with disabilities. If you have an interest in accessibility issues and ways of improving our services to people with disabilities, please call Peter on 01992 453 776. The next Disabilities Forum meeting will take place on Wednesday 14th July 6.30 – 8.30pm at Scania House. Repairs PanelAt several residents meetings last year, you told us that having a good repairs service was the most important service you wanted from us.
To help us improve our service, we have developed a Repairs Panel to look at the repairs service with you to find out how we’re doing and work together to take it to the next level.
If you would like to join this group and help shape our service, come along to the next meeting on Monday 12th July 2010 6.00pm – 8.00pm at Scania House
Satisfaction SurveysWe carry out satisfaction surveys across different service areas; these include major works, responsive repairs, lettings and anti-social behaviour services. The results tell us how well we deliver services and help us to identify areas for improvement. This feedback also helps us to ensure that Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) residents, disabled residents and other potentially disadvantaged groups are at least as satisfied with our services as residents generally. We also compare our satisfaction levels with similar landlords to measure how well we are performing.
Complaints, compliments and suggestionsWe welcome all types of customer feedback including complaints. Residents can give us feedback by phone, e-mail, in person and in writing. We have a formal complaints policy which means that we will respond to all complaints within set time scales.
More InformationIf you would like to join or set up a residents' association in your area, or would other wise like to get involved in how Broxbourne Housing Association is run please contact the Resident Involvement Manager, Peter Walkinshaw on 01992 453776 or email enquiry@broxbourneha.org.uk We are also part of a resident involvement group covering Hertfordshire known as tpherts. To visit this link www.tpherts.org.uk. |
