What is the Housing Management service?

We provide an excellent Housing Management service to people who live in the council’s 30,000 rented homes and other types of housing. This service is focused on the customer and is provided from 13 Community Housing Offices and three Customer Service Centres. The services we provide are:

• managing estates;
• enforcing tenancy agreements, including dealing with anti-social behaviour and missed rent payments (arrears);
• managing empty homes;
• letting homes;
• reporting and monitoring repairs;
• working in partnership with other agencies, especially Newcastle City Council;
• working with leaseholders and the private sector;
• contributing to improving and refurbishing homes, and housing development;
• helping people to stay in their homes and live in their community; and
• helping provide the Modern Homes Programme to improve all council homes to a high standard.

Find out more in the Finding a home section

What can I expect from the service?

Help with your housing application
We offer council homes in Newcastle using the Your choice homes scheme. If you apply to join the scheme, you can then ask to be considered for any property that is advertised to let.

Our property standard
We will make sure that when you move into a new property, it is safe, clean and in good condition.

Commitment to new tenants

• When you look at a home we will offer to show you around and tell you about the fixtures, fittings and services.
• We will make sure your home is clean and safe and that we have done all the repairs to make sure it meets our standard for an empty home.
•  If your home needs decorating, we will talk to you about what we can offer you and how it will be done.
• We will tell you about the other services we offer that can help you settle into your home. These include help with furniture and gardening, and advice and support in managing your tenancy if you need it. We will also tell you about other agencies that might be able to help you.
• We will explain your tenancy agreement to you before you sign it, and give you a copy. We will not ask you to sign it until you are sure you understand it.
• We will give you a welcome pack. This will contain information about your home, your local area and its services.
• We will visit you within six weeks of you moving into your new home to make sure you have no problems with your tenancy.

A high quality repairs service
We are committed to making sure that all repairs reported to us are carried out as quickly and efficiently as possible by our contractor. You can read the full repairs service standards at Repairs Service Standards.

Help if you have problems with anti-social behaviour
We will help you if you have problems with anti-social behaviour. We also have a specialist Housing and Anti-social Behaviour Enforcement Team who deal with serious cases of nuisance and harassment. You can read the service standards for the Housing and Anti-social Behaviour Enforcement Team here.

Help with paying your rent
You should pay your rent every week. You can pay less often if we agree to this, but your payments should then be for the period of time to come.

When you sign up for your tenancy, we will tell you:

• how much rent you have to pay for your home;
• how, where and when you have to pay it;
• how to claim Housing Benefit; and
• how to get help with managing your rent from our advice and support service, if you need it.

If you have any questions about your rent account, we will:

• offer you a confidential interview and try to deal with your question immediately (if we cannot deal with it there and then we will reply to you in writing within 10 working days); and
• give you details about your account, including the balance, if you need it.

If you ask for a statement of your account, we will provide it within five working days and we will also regularly give you a statement of your rent account. If you miss rent payments, we will contact you to agree how these will be paid back and confirm in writing any agreement made.

If you have missed rent payments and you fail to keep to an agreement with us to pay your arrears, we will:

• take legal action to recover your debt (we will explain your legal rights to you and what will happen if we have to take you to court);
• tell you, in writing, that we are going to go to court, and the outcome of any legal action; and
• take action to evict you (force you to leave your home) if you fail to make payments ordered by the court.

After your tenancy has ended, we will:

• confirm, in writing, whether you owe us any rent (if you do owe us rent, we will try to agree repayments with you and explain the problems you may have if you want to apply for another home from us); and
• if you do not keep to the agreement, we may pass your debt to a debt-collection agency for them to get it back from you.

Maintaining estates and working with residents
We are committed to working with residents to make sure estates are well maintained. To do this, we carry out estate inspections and estate ‘walkabouts’. Inspections are carried out by housing staff to identify areas that need improving or repairing. Estate walkabouts are similar, except all local residents are invited to take part, so that issues people on your estate are concerned about can be identified and dealt with.

We have service standards covering estate inspections and walkabouts.
We also have a long-term commitment to work with residents’ groups across Newcastle. We aim to go to all residents’ and community group meetings we are invited to.

Our customer service
We work hard to provide excellent customer service to all our customers. Read our customer service standards here.

Housing Management service standards

• We will make sure that 95% of all Your Choice Homes applications received by community housing teams are registered within five working days.
• We will give you a copy of our standard for empty homes and will tell you what work we will do to your home before you move in. Our target is to meet this standard for at least 95% of new tenancies.
• We will visit you at home within six weeks of you moving in to discuess any problems you may have, including paying your rent. We aim to meet this standard for at least 95% of tenancies.
• If you are experiencing anti-social behaviour we will contact you within the following times to offer a face-to-face interview, an interview by phone or by e-mail if you would prefer. The timescales are based on how serious the anti-social behaviour is.
  • We will contact you the next working day if the anti-social behaviour is very serious.
  • We will contact you within three working days if the anti-social behaviour is serious but does not need an immediate response.
  • We will contact you within five working days for less serious types of anti-social behaviour.
• We aim to inspect all empty properties within 24 hours of receiving the keys. We aim to achieve this standard in 95% of the time.
• We will monitor how satisfied our customers are with the service and we aim to achieve at least 81% satisfaction.

Click here to read the full version of the Housing Management Service Standards