Service Commitment:   Resident Involvement and Customer Care

Customer contact

• Our staff - will always be courteous and professional and aim to deal with your enquiry to your complete satisfaction
• Office opening times - 9am - 5pm, Monday to Friday. You can contact us by telephone, letter, email, via our website or in person at our office (full contact details are set out below)
• Out-of-hours emergency repairs service – is available for you after 5pm and at weekends
• Letters and emails – will be acknowledged in 2 days. We aim to provide a full reply within 7 days

• Telephone calls - will be answered within 30 seconds and missed calls returned within 24 hours
• Visiting our office – we will see you within 5 minutes of arrival and you will be offered a private meeting room, if appropriate   
• Visiting your home  - we will arrive on time, show ID and let you know if we are likely to be late
• Settling-in visit – we will visit all new tenants within 6 weeks of someone moving in to their new home to check that everything is OK and help with any issues that may be raised
• Diverse needs of customers – we will provide full and fair access to services for all customers and will provide information in formats which meet your known communication requirements 
• Customer complaints – we will fully investigate any concerns raised about services in line with our complaints policy and will inform you of the outcome, including what action is to be taken   

Resident consultation

• Seeking your views - we will consult with you via surveys, meetings, letters and estate walkabouts before making changes to the services you receive. We will fully consider your feedback before making a final decision 
• Keeping you informed – we will always let you know the outcome of any consultation, our reasons for reaching a decision and of any implications this may have for your service charge
• Sharing information – we will regularly publish news about our services in Open House, our newsletter for residents. We will also provide details on our website, www.RSMHA.org.uk  
• Resident associations – we will actively support and work with resident groups and associations, consulting with them about all matters affecting their scheme or neighbourhood
• Leasehold obligations – in addition to the above, we will also comply with our legal duty to formally consult with leasehold residents about communal maintenance work being proposed  
• Resident survey – every 3 years we will ask all residents to complete a customer survey about the overall quality of our services and the accommodation we provide, and will publish the results so that a comparison can be made with the performance of other housing associations 
• Recruitment of staff – we will invite a resident to join our recruitment panel when appointing a new scheme manager and members of our senior management team    
• Representation on our Board – we wish to have at least 1 resident serving on our voluntary Board of management and will provide support and training for residents to achieve this
• Annual report for residents – every autumn we will send you a report telling you how well the association has been performing, what our financial strength is and our plans for the future            

Rent and service charges

• Setting service charges – we will consult with you about any changes affecting the amount of service charge you will have to pay 
• Account statements – we will send you a statement at least every 3 months. Your statement will be in plain English and show everything that you have paid and any amount that is owed to us
• Making payments – we will provide a number of ways for you to pay, including by direct debit, standing order, online via our website, Allpay, cheque and cash  
• Arrears - we will send you timely reminders about any rent or service charge owing and will only take formal recovery action if a suitable repayment programme is not agreed and complied with     
• Housing benefit – we will provide advice about your entitlement and help with application forms

Service Commitment:  Maintaining Good Quality Homes

Repairs and Maintenance

• Timescales for completing repairs – we aim to carry out work in line with the following priorities;

Emergency – 24 hours; Urgent – 7 days; Essential – 14 days; Routine – 30 days (calendar days)

• Gas safety checks – we will comply with our legal duty to undertake these checks to all rented homes every year
• Our contractors - we will ensure that all of our repair contractors follow our code of conduct and we will regularly review the quality of their work

• Planned maintenance - we will tell you about any planned maintenance proposed at your home or scheme in the next 12 months and give you adequate notice of the start date to prepare for this

• Checking performance - we will inspect at least 20% of all recently completed day-to-day repairs to confirm resident satisfaction with the quality of the work and the overall service received    

Quality of Accommodation

• Decent Home Standard – we will ensure that 100% of our rented homes meet this standard
• New properties – we will ensure that all our new housing developments are designed to meet customer expectations and provide good, attractive homes for people to live in 
• Empty properties – all rented homes will have essential repair work and cleaning undertaken before they are let to a new tenant
• Sustainable homes – we will strive to reduce the carbon footprint of our homes and have a positive influence on the energy costs of our residents      
• Obtaining feedback – we will undertake a satisfaction survey within 10 weeks of anyone moving in to a new a home    

Service Commitment:  Neighbourhoods and Communal Areas

Neighbourhood management

• Designated member of staff – we will designate a specific member of housing staff for every scheme who will be responsible for overseeing our service (except repairs) at that location and who will respond to queries raised by residents  
• Scheme inspections – every month we will inspect the communal areas of any scheme of more than 10 homes to check that everything is satisfactory and we will follow-up quickly where not 
• Estate walkabouts – we will invite residents of any scheme of more than 10 homes to join a member of our staff on a walkabout of the grounds twice a year to look at and to discuss any issues 
• Gardening and cleaning – we will provide residents with full details of the work to be undertaken to the communal areas at their scheme and will regularly monitor the standards achieved
• Community partnership – we will work closely with other local organisations, such as the council, to ensure that services for the wider community are meeting our residents’ needs              

Tackling anti-social behaviour

• Responding to resident concerns - we will fully investigate any reported incident in line with our published policy and will always seek to take appropriate action as quickly as possible
• Support for victims – we will find out what steps someone reporting an incident would like us to take, advise them what options are available and will keep the person fully informed of progress 
• Working with others – we will work closely with the police, the council’s environmental health department (which investigates noise nuisance) and other agencies to address crime and anti-social behaviour problems