Our sector is changing. There has never been a greater emphasis than now on forming a meaningful partnership with the people we serve: our residents.

We recognise that the deal we offer our residents needs to improve or change, and that in order to do this we must work to ensure that we understand what the real needs and aspirations of residents are. To help us achieve this, we are undertaking extensive work on resident profiling, making increased efforts to engage with as many of our customers as possible, and working on a continuous improvement programme called Orion.

Orion aims to improve our business by fostering a culture of self-awareness and collaborative working. It is not a ‘quick fix’, but a sustained and ongoing programme of review, learning and action that is intended to draw all our Associations together to present a level of service that our residents really value. We believe that Orion will help us to achieve a consistent level of excellence across our business, support our decision-making for service development, and make us a landlord of choice for customers within the communities we serve.

The Orion programme – aims:

• align our operational services across all subsidiaries in Sovereign Group;
• ensure these services meet the needs and aspirations of residents;
• support the continuous improvement of the standards of services to residents;
• ensure that Sovereign Group attains a 'best in sector' level of performance.

To deliver against these aims, Orion includes the following activities:

• Formally setting out operational service standards that promise an excellent level of provision to all our residents.
• Self-assessments undertaken against the new standards, identifying areas of good and poor provision within each subsidiary.
• Creation of action plans, aimed at delivering the new standards of service.
• Roll out of service improvement projects, to deliver the identified actions.
• An ongoing programme of peer reviews, to analyse the status of services and provide reality checks on performance and delivery.
• Regular reviews of service standards, to ensure that they remain relevant to residents’ needs and ambitions.

Orion – Our target service areas
These align with the current Audit Commission Key Lines of Enquiry (KLOEs), and are as follows:

• Access and Customer Care
• Allocations and Lettings
• Equality and Diversity
• Income Management
• Leasehold Services
• Property and Maintenance
• Resident Involvement
• Supported Housing
• Tenancy and Estate Management
• Value for Money

We are also working to ensure that our services have standards that at a minimum match the standards and requirements of our regulator, the TSA. 
 
What is a peer review?
A peer review is an opportunity to review how individual services are actually carried out ‘on the ground’, i.e. do we do what we say we should? All subsidiaries are included, with each review coordinated centrally by the Project Manager in the Group Performance team. The review team features both staff and a selection of Resident Inspectors. The team scrutinises the service, makes an assessment of how good it is, and decides whether it is delivering what residents really want. Peer reviews will improve our ability to be self-scrutinising and more open to new ideas from both our staff and residents, with improved opportunities for networking between teams. They will highlight areas of poor delivery or excellence and make recommendations for improvements.

You can read summary reports from our peer reviews below.

Allocations & Lettings
Gas Servicing
Disabled Adaptations
Resident Involvement  (coming Sept 2010)
Response Repairs (coming Jan 2011)

For more information on Orion and peer reviews, contact Alex Swinburn, Project Manager, alex.swinburn@sovereign.org.uk