Inspection update – how are we getting on with improving our services?

So far we have reviewed:

• our gas servicing programme and decided that from 1 April 2009 we will carry out gas safety checks and services every 11 months. This will help us to make sure that every home with a gas heating system or gas appliance is serviced within 12 months, which we have to do by law.
• our approach to equality and diversity in all our services and have trained staff to assess the impact of policies and projects on different groups of people.
• our aids and adaptations service and come up with a plan of actions to improve our service over the next 2 years, including publicising our service better, working with our local authority partners to ensure our residents get major adaptations (those that generally cost over £2,500) carried out to their homes as quickly as possible, improving how we manage and monitor works we carry out and most importantly setting up a disabled users forum to help us to shape the service in the years to come.
• the standard we re-let our empty homes and asked residents what they would like to see in a new standard. We are now developing a new re-let standard based on these views that we will use for all homes that become empty from 1 April 2009
• how much our services cost compared to others and are now working on developing a strategy that will explain how we will show that our services are offering value for money.
• the performance information we give to our Board and introduced a new report that the Board will see every 3 months. The new report tells our Board members how well we are doing compared with other organisations.

We have also introduced an out of hours antisocial behaviour hotline for all our residents living in the Bournemouth area and have plans to extend this service next year.

We’ve got lots more work to do and are still in the middle of several reviews, including how we involve residents in what we do and how we will improve our customer service.  We will let you know the outcomes of these reviews in the next newsletter but in the meantime if you want to help us with our new re-let standard or become a member of our disabled users forum please contact James Taylor, our Resident Involvement Officer, on 01202 460348.