At Newport City Homes, we want to keep on learning and improving all the time.
One of the best ways of doing this is by finding out what our customers think of our services and their experiences when dealing with us.
Every year, we ask our customers to have their say through our ‘Survey of Tenants and Residents’ – known as STAR for short.
STAR was developed by Housemark, in consultation with hundreds of UK housing providers, and other key stakeholders. The STAR survey is now used by over 300 social landlords across the UK. Find out more about how the survey works.
Through STAR we can understand what’s working well, the areas where we need to improve and how we compare with other housing providers.
The results get reported to our colleagues, our Board, Welsh Government – and to you, through our ‘Customers and Communities at the Heart’ report. And the insights we gather, alongside other forms of customer feedback including compliments and complaints, really do influence where we prioritise our resources and efforts.
It can be difficult to compare scores with other social landlords, because there are so many variables – including our stock size, the age and condition of properties, customer demographics and geographical profile. What is clear is that there’s room to improve at Newport City Homes.
Communication is a theme that has been identified from our STAR survey as an area where we can increase satisfaction with our services. We’re listening to customers and working hard to improve the customer experience and the way we communicate. We hope the introduction of our new customer app, for example, will make it quicker and easier to get in touch with us, report a repair or query and mobilise our response teams.
We know that our repairs service is a leading driver of satisfaction, , with around a third of our latest STAR survey comments mentioning it. That’s why we’re focusing on making changes and ensuring that we place our customers, and their voice, at the centre of how we work.
When it comes to rent and service charges, our customers tell us that they aren’t always sure what their charges cover or whether they’re receiving value for money.
We hope this picture is improving since the new Renting Homes Act legislation came into force, with the new customer contracts clearly stating the rent and service charge arrangements. But we’re also making changes within our teams, including through the introduction of Customer Account Managers and Service Charge Managers, to work closely with customers, right throughout their tenancies, to better support them in this area.
So, if you’re a Newport City Homes customer, please do bear in mind how useful your views are to us. And when you’re next invited to take part in our STAR survey, it would be helpful if you could spare the time to complete it.
By participating, you’re supporting our improvement efforts, which will make a difference to us and everyone who accesses our services. We want to thank everyone who has taken part before, and we hope you’ll continue to do so.
It means a lot.