Relentlessly resident focused
We put residents first because they are the reason we exist.
By 2030 we will:
- Be in the top 25% of all landlords when residents are asked “How satisfied are you with the service provided by your landlord?”
- Meet all of our service standards by delivering consistently great services.
- Be low effort for residents. We will have made our services easy to access by improving and increasing the ways in which they can be accessed digitally. This means that residents choose digital as their preferred way to engage with us and we achieve a resident effort score of under 3.
- Communicate clearly and regularly in ways that work for residents.
- Achieve the highest possible C1 rating for the consumer standards.
- Continue to meet all requirements of the Housing Ombudsman Code of Conduct for complaints.
- Know residents and understand how best to meet their diverse needs, offering extra support where we can.
- Maintain neighbourhoods to a high standard. This means that residents record less than 20% dissatisfaction against the Tenant Satisfaction Measure that communal areas are well maintained.
By 2030:
Resident effort score under 3
In the top 25% of all landlords when residents are asked “How satisfied are you with the service provided by your landlord?”
We start this plan having made significant progress in how we deliver services to residents during recent years. This has naturally included a focus on investment in new technologies to improve access to services, along with improving how we do things. As a result, we have improved resident trust in us - from a score of 6.3 in 2019/20 to 7.4 at the end of 2023/24 [where the higher the score the better]. We also improved the resident effort score from 4.3 in 2019/20 to 2.8 at the end of 2023/24 [where the lower the score the better]. We have invested in providing a better digital experience to residents, with usage at 34%, improved the support we offer to vulnerable residents and launched a new model of service delivery based on our principle of being there for all residents when they need us.
We know there is more that we need to do. We have outlined clear priorities that we will focus on during the next five years.
How are we confident that these are the right ambitions to focus on?
Through the breadth of feedback and engagement that has informed this plan.
After discussions with the settle Voice of the Resident panel, we sent surveys to all settle residents to identify the priorities we should focus on. From over 200 responses, amongst the top four themes residents believe we should focus on are how we listen to residents and act on what we are told, along with the importance of better communication.
The feedback we have received from our early Tenant Satisfaction Measure surveys, and through complaints, also emphasise the importance of improving communication, reducing wait times and aspects such as improving satisfaction with how we maintain neighbourhoods.
We start this plan in April 2024 during a period of important progress for the housing sector. On 1 April 2024 the Regulator of Social Housing launched new standards for social housing landlords that are driven by protecting tenants and improving the services they receive from landlords. Meeting these requirements will be at the heart of our work over the coming years, and our commitment is to do so by being relentlessly resident focused.
How will we know we’ve achieved these ambitions?
We will monitor individual targets for each of the aims we have set ourselves. These will be linked particularly to how we provide individual services, for example target times for completing repairs, and specific Tenant Satisfaction Measures, for example around quality of neighbourhoods.
We will monitor our overall progress towards being relentlessly resident focussed through the first question asked in the Tenant Satisfaction Measures survey: “How satisfied are you with the service provided by your landlord”. With results across all landlords published annually, our target will to consistently be amongst the highest scoring [top 25%] of all landlords for this question. Our aim is that residents feel we are low effort to engage with. Our target will be to achieve an effort score of under 3. This will be supported by investment in improving and increasing the ways in which residents can access the services we provide digitally. We will monitor progress against this through introducing a new measure tracking resident satisfaction with the digital services we provide.
Our commitment is that throughout, we will consistently and continually work with residents on how we deliver the plan. We will monitor and respond to data, feedback and insight to make sure we achieve the best outcomes we can for residents.
We will continue to engage the settle Voice of the Resident Panel on the progress we are making. During this plan, we also intend to recruit one resident to sit on the Board Operations Committee.
We will ensure that the voice of residents drives our strategy at settle, and that we continue to put residents first, because they are the reason we exist.