April 2007 - Charter Mark

At the end of April we were visited by the Charter Mark Assessor.  This was to carry out a 12 month review of Your choice homes following the award of Charter Mark in March 2006.
The Assessor was impressed with developments in the service and in the way that issues identified as ‘part compliances’ in 2006 (areas where more work needed to be done) had been addressed.

The service had their Charter Mark status confirmed and it is likely that we will not need further inspections until 2009.  This is good news and reflects hard work by the Your choice homes team in all areas of customer service.  It is also good news for Your Homes Newcastle as it means that we still have a total of six Charter Mark services, with more applications to be made this year.

Exhibitions and events we have attended

• Mela
• 'Your Homes Your Say' - Your Homes Newcastle's main event for tenants and leaseholders
• Chartered Institute of Housing conference
• Choice based lettings conference - Gateshead Service
• Users Conference - mental health
• Older People's Conference
• Byker Village Community Meeting
• Choice Based Lettings Annual Conference
• Freeman Hospital Event
• Easington District Council
• Regional Choice Based Lettings
• Homeless Prevention Network Event

You said we did

What you said:

When the Property Shop first opened you told us that you would like us to extend our opening hours so that we opened at more convenient times.

What we did:

We piloted extended hours on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to find out when it was best to open.  During this time we asked customers what they thought of our opening times and monitored how many customers came into the Property Shop.

At the end of the pilot we could tell when we should open to make sure that customers could access the Service at the times that they wanted.

You can find out when the Property Shop is open by visiting Contact Us.