Modern Homes service standards
What is the Modern Homes Programme?
The Modern Homes Programme is Newcastle’s biggest
ever housing-improvement programme. We have successfully applied
for £348 million of extra government funding after achieving a
2-star rating. The Government’s ‘Best Value’ inspections rate
housing providers on a scale of 0 to 3, and 2-star means that the
Government think we provide a ‘good’ service. We will use this
money to make sure all council homes meet the Government’s standard
for a decent home by 2010.
We have worked with tenants to decide how best to
organise the improvement work. We decided to split the work into
two separate packages – work inside your home, and work outside
your home. We will carry these out separately with a break in
between. This will reduce the amount of disruption to your home
during the work.
Visit the Modern
Homes Investment section to find out more
What can I expect from the service?
Consulting you and providing
information
- We will produce a plan each year for improving
homes in the coming year. We will publish the plan in our
newsletter ‘Homes + People’, in Community Housing Offices and on
our website.
- We will always write to you first to tell you about
any work we are planning for your home. We will do this at least
three months before the work is due to start.
- Nearer to the time, we will write to you again and
give you more details about any work we are planning for your home.
We may also invite you to an open event.
- When we write to you, we will make sure we provide
a contact name and phone number.
- We will make sure you can choose fixtures and
finishes whenever possible (for example, when we improve your
kitchen or bathroom).
- We will always take account of any special needs
you have (for example, if you are disabled or ill) when carrying
out improvement work to your home.
Carrying out improvements to your
home
We will make sure that you receive at least seven
days’ notice of when we will carry out work to your home. When we
are working on your home, we will:
- protect you and your home by making sure our
contractors work carefully and safely;
- respect you and your home while the work is going
on;
- make sure that everyone visiting your home carries
identity cards;
- cause as little disruption and inconvenience as
possible; and
- monitor our contractors to make sure they clean up
after themselves at the end of each working day.
- We will keep our appointments with you and let you
know if we are running late.
- We will always try to finish the work in the
timescale agreed. However, if we have to delay the work (for
example, because of bad weather), we will tell you by writing to
you, phoning you or visiting you at home.
- We will always give you the name and Freephone
number of the person to contact if you have any questions or
problems about the work to your home.
Our service standards
- We will write to you to tell you about any work we
are planning for your home at least three months before work is due
to start.
- We will hold an information event before we start
work on your estate under the modern homes programme.
- We will carry out customer satisfaction surveys on
your estate during the modern homes work.
- We will carry out a customer satisfaction survey
within three months of the estate being finished on all of our
completed schemes to assess the quality of the work and service. We
will let you know what we have found and what we are going to do
about any problems.
- We aim for 85% of our customers to be satisfied
with the internal work we have done on the Modern Homes
Programme.
- We aim for 93% of our customers to be satisfied with
the external work we have done on the Modern Homes
Programme.
Click
here for a full copy of the Modern
Homes Investment service standards
Local offers
Local offers are commitments that have been designed by tenants
to improve housing services. We talked to lots of
tenants to find out what is most important to them to help us
improve. One of our local offers for 2012-2013 will be
delivered by the Modern Homes team: