Our service standards

We know that moving home can be overwhelming, so we want to make the process as smooth as possible for you.

• If your application has been successful, we'll let you know by telephone or text. We’ll then arrange a viewing where you can sign up there and then.
• If you’re unsure whether you want to accept the home, we’ll give you 24 hours to think it over and arrange a sign up as soon as possible after this. 
• We’ll go through your tenancy agreement with you to make sure it all makes sense and let you know when your tenancy is expected to start. If there’s any plans for future improvement work on your new home, we’ll let you know about these too.
• Once you’re in, we’ll check in on you within six weeks to make sure you’re settled. 

We’ll give you our Welcome Home booklet which includes all sorts of useful information about our services and living in one of our homes.

If your application was unsuccessful and you applied via your local authority, we’ll give written confirmation to you or your nominated support worker letting you know why with some general housing advice.

For customers who need adaptations in their home, we’ll match available homes to those with specific requirements.

Keeping you safe in your home is really important, which is why we do safety checks throughout the year to make sure everything’s as it should be.

We’ll inspect your gas appliances annually. If anything fails the check we’ll repair or replace the faulty appliance if it belongs to us. If it belongs to you, we’ll disconnect it and ask you to get help from a Gas Safe Registered installer. 

We’ll also do an electrical safety check every five years, to make sure things like wiring and installations in your home are safe. If anything we’re responsible for needs fixing we’ll come back to repair it within our agreed repairs timescales.

And depending on the type of your home, we also might do fire risk assessments, fire door Inspections, asbestos re-inspections, legionella risk assessments and lift servicing and inspections.

If you’re concerned that you or someone you know is experiencing harm, abuse or neglect, you can get more information on our safeguarding page.

When you report a repair, we’ll ask a few questions to help us understand what’s going on, and it’ll help us decide whether it’s an emergency or not.

For emergency repairs: 

• We’ll make your home safe within 4 hours
• We’ll complete the repair within 24 hours of you reporting it

For non-emergency repairs: 

• For some repairs we guarantee a 28-day timescale to get it sorted for you
• For planned repairs, it’s a 90-day guarantee (this is because we often need specialist skills, machinery or materials for these jobs) 

For problems with damp and mould, we’ll split the hazards into emergency or significant.

For emergency hazards like damp and mould that’s affecting breathing. We’ll aim to visit within four hours, and always within 24 hours, to investigate and fix the issue or make it safe. If we can’t make your home safe within those 24 hours, we’ll arrange temporary accommodation for you until it’s safe.

For significant hazards like persistent damp and mould, condensation linked to poor ventilation, or mould in bedrooms and living areas that could worsen health. We’ll investigate within 10 working days, make your home safe within five, and complete any extra repairs within 12 weeks.

Everyone should feel safe in their own home, but sometimes antisocial behaviour stops this from happening. There’s lots we can do to help:

• We’ll aim to remove racist or offensive graffiti within 24 hours and other graffiti within three working days
• Any damage to property caused by antisocial behaviour will be repaired in line with our repairs policy. For emergency repairs we’ll complete the repair within 24 hours of you reporting it, and for non-emergency repairs we’ll get someone out to fix it within 28 days.
• We’ll keep your information confidential and never share it without your permission
• If it’s an urgent case we’ll be in touch within 24 hours. Otherwise we’ll contact you within 5 working days
• We’ll investigate your complaint.  To do this we’ll speak to you and the person you’ve made the complaint against
• We'll give you a dedicated housing officer to work with you if you report antisocial behaviour
• If we think that your neighbour's causing antisocial behaviour, we’ll decide on a course of action. And we’ll keep you informed at every stage
• If we think that your report isn't about antisocial behaviour, we might still investigate your concerns to see what’s happening but it wouldn’t follow our antisocial behaviour procedure
• If there’s not enough evidence we’ll look for some community based solutions or close the case
• Once we start working on a case, if the situation doesn’t improve, we’ll look to take further action.

When you call us we aim to answer within 180 seconds on average, and when you get in touch on email or through our customer portal we’ll get back to you within two working days.

We know the best way to improve our services is by listening to you, which is why we have loads of flexible ways you can join in and share your opinions.

Supporting local community projects, or sharing your feedback about an experience you’ve had with us is a really helpful way to shape what we do for the better. But if you want to be more involved, there’s customer groups you can join:

• Your voice matters: with over 1,000 customers in the group, it’s a great way to share your thoughts if you’re short on time.
• Feedback forum: for customers who want to get involved making changes based on the complaints, suggestions and compliments we get
• Review crew: have your say in how we deliver our services, and hold us to account on what we do.
• Customer insight committee: they review our performance and lead service reviews to drive improvements that matter.
• Customer grants panel: they review and assess applications to help decide where money will have the biggest impact.
• Social clubs: there’s one for everyone, they meet each week with each meeting having a different theme.
• Inclusion groups: safe spaces for customers to come together and influence change. There’s our Diversity Counts, Reyt Proud and Disability Voices groups.

If you make a complaint we’ll try to resolve it straight away. 

If we can’t solve the problem straight away, we’ll log a stage one formal complaint. 

We’ll let you know we’ve received your complaint within five workings days. Once we’ve logged your complaint, we’ll aim to resolve it within 10 working days. We’ll investigate the complaint and contact you to talk through how we can resolve the issue.

If you’re unhappy with the result you can ask for a review. We call this a stage two formal complaint, and it’ll be reviewed by someone else. We'll then issue a final response to the stage two complaint within 20 working days of it being acknowledged.

If you’re still unhappy with our response, you can reach out to the Housing Ombudsman. They were set up by the regulator of social housing to look at complaints about landlords registered with them. Their service is free, independent and impartial.

Throughout the year, we share reports that show what we’ve done, how we’ve done it or what we’re planning to do in the not so distant future. These include:

• Tenant Satisfaction Measures results
• Customer Annual Report
• Performance updates

And if you make a Subject Access Request about the information we have about you, we’ll respond to and action your request within one calendar month.

We survey our homes every five years, we call this our stock condition survey. We might survey some homes more often depending on factors like the age, condition and repairs history – these homes are surveyed on a risk based program.

Each part of the home has an expected lifespan, and after this point we’d likely replace it. We use the information we have to get a better understanding on how your home and components are performing. But we know that sometimes these elements might last a bit longer, or need replacing sooner, which is why we survey homes every five years.

Lifecycles in a home:

• Kitchens - 20 years
• Bathrooms -30 years
• Windows - 30 years
• External doors - 30 years
• Roofs - 70 years
• Flat roofs - 30 years
• External wall finish (e.g. render and pointing) - 70 years
• Maintenance like external painting – 7 to 10 years depending on component features
• Communal areas like internal decorations and flooring – 7 to 10 years depending on their condition and usage

Heating:

• Gas boilers - 15 years (based on condition checked annually as part of Landlord Gas Safety Responsibilities)
• Air source heat pumps and ground source heat pumps - 15 to 20 years.
• Electric storage and panel heaters - 30 years

Having different access needs shouldn’t mean that information’s off limits. So if you need adjustments or translations, let us know and we can make sure you get the right information in the right way.

Our website has an accessibility toolbar which:

• Translates our content into 100+ languages
• Reads text read out loud
• Changes colours, fonts, and text size
• Uses reading aids like screen masks and magnifiers

Just click the green circle with the person icon (bottom right corner) on any page – on mobile or desktop – and explore the settings that work best for you.

And if your circumstances have changed and you’re struggling in your home, we might be able to make some changes that make your life easier so you can carry on living safely and securely in your own home.