Service Standards

We measure our performance against service standards.  Click here to read our service standards.

During the last three years we received and processed:

Customer service delivered by the Right to Buy team

• 80% of our customers felt that the overall service they received was very good and a further 20% thought the service received was good.
• 100% of our customers thought they were treated fairly and with respect.
• !00% of our customers thought the Right to Buy team behaved professionally and politely
• 100% of our customers thought the Right to Buy team had the right skills and knowledge to do their job.

Customer service delivered by the Valuation team 

• 73.3% of our customers thought the service received from our valuation department was very good and 20% thought it was good.
• 93% of customers said the property valuer turned up within the specified time.
• 93% of customers said that the property valuer was polite and courteous
• 73% of customers said they were given a choice of appointment times.

Customer service delivered by the Conveyancing team

• 71.4% of our customers thought the service received was very good and 28.6% thought it was good.
• 85.7% of our customers thought the conveyancing team were polite and courteous.
• 93.3% of our customers thought the conveyancing team kept to the agreed timescales.

We ask all our customers at the start of the process if the information we provide in our application packs is useful.  Of the customers who responded during June 2009 to December 2009:

• 80% found our application pack very helpful
• 20% found our application pack helpful.

Our Charter Mark and Customer Service Excellence Award

Your Homes Newcastle’s Right to Buy Team achieved their first Charter Mark Award for Customer Service Excellence in July 2006. 

The Right to Buy team were reassessed in July 2007 and achieved full compliance across all six criteria. 

In April 2008 the Charter Mark Award was replaced with the Customer Service Excellence Award. 

The Right to Buy team were assessed in March 2009 and achieved their first Customer Service Excellence Award.  The assessor highlighted a summary of strengths in his report:

The team has a strong commitment to delivering high quality, customer focussed services.  This is clearly evident through the ideas for improvement to the service that have been generated, and implemented, since the Team has been in operation.

The quality of information is high and feedback from customers indicates that it is easy to read and understand.

The service works within a rigid legislative framework.  Within this, staff have developed a customer focussed service and operate within the targets that are a significant improvement on those within the legislation.

Staff work with a customer focussed culture that is fostered by the Chief Executive.  They have developed this culture within their team and this is evident in their approach to how they deliver services. 

The service is committed to exploring and taking a lead in developing benchmarking in an area of work where there is little formal benchmarking available across the housing sector.

What our customers said about our service:

“I found buying my home extremely straight forward, YHN were very helpful, pleasant staff and very easy to understand”

“I have no complaints.  When I needed advice the staff were quick to respond and very helpful”

“Flexible and supportive over the raising of funds due to the economic climate”

“The whole team are quick and very helpful”.

“I couldn’t find anything wrong with the service.  It was very professional.  It was all explained in the brochure”.

“They were very helpful, they explained everything that was needed, the team was very good”.

Service improvements following customer comments

Our customer said:

“I received the completion notice and was unsure what to do next.  More information should be included in the information pack.

What we did:

We have updated our quick glance process to inform the customer what are the next steps to take”. 

Our customer said:

“Should receive more information about the costs to Leaseholders for improvements”.

What we did:

We have produced a Capital Costs FAQ page and sent it to all leaseholders with their offer notice.

We have set up an agreement with our Leasehold team to contact the customer following the issue of the Leasehold offer notice to discuss possible future costs and any issues they may have regarding the costs.

How much it costs to run our service

The cost of providing the Right to Buy Service is calculated by adding together the separate costs of each part of the process and then dividing this total by the number of applications received during the year. The separate costs include items like staffing costs, conveyancing, property valuation, District Valuer costs and the costs incurred by employing external organisations.

During 2008/2009 the cost of the whole service was £142,935 and the number of applications received was 144 resulting in an average cost per application of £992.60