You said, we did...

As a result of this feedback, all boiler installers have been spoken to and will ensure that switches are back on after any work is carried out.

A dedicated person has been appointed at Mears and their job is to monitor the live tracking of appointments, working alongside the planners

Mears were made aware of this through our complaints procedure. A call back system is now in place to make sure calls are returned by the end of each day.

As a result, it’s been agreed to review the wording in the stage one letter and for compliance coordinators to ensure they check the service history with Mears before these letters are sent out.

Mears have now increased their oil resources and restocked in everything needed for oil boilers.

It was apparent that this was an issue for several customers. Mears have informed us that they’ve now recruited an extra air source heat pump engineer and are offering further training to other engineers.

During our investigation, it was discovered that this information wasn’t available as supervisors don’t record visits to customers’ homes as an engineer would. Mears said they’d change this so all visits are recorded on the system.

We’ve worked with Mears to improve the communication between them and customers when appointments are cancelled. They’ve increased the number of customers they’ve contacted to inform them about cancelled appointments from 26 percent to 71 percent. These have then been rebooked.

The service specification has been added to customer surveys and can be found on our repairs and maintenance page.

As a result, grounds maintenance and cleaning quality assurance checks are being carried out by the Estate Contracts Team where there are low scores received for these services, and we’ve identified areas for immediate improvement.

Previously, flats above ground floor level would not be let to families with children aged under 10. As a result of customer consultation, we amended this policy and will now let flats above the ground floor to families with children over the age of seven.

The process of letting a property has now been digitalised to make it more efficient. During September 2020, we called customers to ask for their feedback about the experience and 96 percent said they thought the new process worked really well.

We’ve committed to meeting this timescale. We’ve trained ‘mystery shoppers’ who test our core services and they began working in September 2020, initially focusing on our Customer Service Team. A total of 19 mystery shops were completed and 15 received a response within two working days. The overall response was very positive, gaining more ‘excellent’ results than ‘poor’. We’re continuing to work with colleagues to improve this service even further.

This situation highlighted a need for members of the Customer Service Team to be fully aware of end of tenancy processes.

It’s also revealed that there needs to be a process in place for how end of tenancies should be monitored, in particular if there are reimbursements to our customers. Work is being done to ensure this is the case.

We revisited our recorded message and changed the sequence so that after the message had been played, music followed, before the message was repeated. This removed the pauses and eliminated the confusion.

We’re in the process of moving towards completing viewings in a virtual manner, where appropriate and possible. This’ll remove the need for applicants having to travel to be able to view the property.

We’re looking at providing applicants with recorded video tours of properties, as well as calling them when a colleague is at the property and walking them through using technology such as Facetime or WhatsApp.

Following this feedback, we’re working with our leasehold customers and shared owners to establish and introduce a Customer Charter which relates specifically to them. This will be developed through close working with these customers.